{"id":36,"date":"2009-02-06T08:26:26","date_gmt":"2009-02-06T13:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=36"},"modified":"2009-02-06T08:26:26","modified_gmt":"2009-02-06T13:26:26","slug":"proving-anything-from-nothing-implication-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2009\/02\/proving-anything-from-nothing-implication-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Proving Anything from Nothing &#8211; Implication Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2009\/02\/proving-anything-from-nothing-implication-part-1\/\">In part 1 of this post<\/a>, I covered the mathematics and truth table of <strong><em>implication<\/em><\/strong>. Implication shows that<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If I accept something that I know is FALSE, I can prove anything else that I know is FALSE<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For example,<a href=\"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2009\/02\/proving-anything-from-nothing-implication-part-1\/\"> if I accept that &#8220;1=2&#8221;, I can prove that &#8220;2=3&#8221;<\/a>. I know that 1 doesn&#8217;t equal 2 and that 2 doesn&#8217;t equal 3, but no matter, <strong><em>implication<\/em><\/strong> lets me believe these things.<\/p>\n<p>This is all illogical and non-sensical, which brings us to the heart of this part of the post &#8211; <strong><em>people<\/em><\/strong>. People &#8211; like me &#8211; are often illogical and non-sensical, and <strong><em>implication<\/em><\/strong> helps me understand us.<\/p>\n<p>For example, consider statement A:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I can concentrate 12 straight hours to write large amounts of error-free software.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Statement A is FALSE as I cannot do that. Now consider statement B:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I can complete the 100,000 line-of-code software project in three weeks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Statement B is FALSE as I cannot do that either. Nevertheless, <strong><em>implication<\/em><\/strong> allows me to say that statement A truly implies statement B.<\/p>\n<p>Some people may believe that I can complete the big project in three weeks. That doesn&#8217;t make sense because both statements A and B are FALSE. That, however, is <strong><em>implication<\/em><\/strong>, and the resulting behavior is the nature of many business and project managers.<\/p>\n<p>As another example, in 1981 I was working on a large project. A person (Mr. Smith, I cannot remember his name) from another government agency was loaned to our agency to help with the project. He made a mistake one day &#8211; we all do. A senior manager on our agency became quite upset. He boldly stated that, (A) &#8220;All people who work in that other agency are idiots (FALSE).&#8221; Then he stated, (B) &#8220;Since Mr. Smith is from that agency, he is an idiot (FALSE).&#8221; By implication, something that is FALSE can truly imply something else that is FALSE. Therefore, our senior manager could imply (B) from (A).<\/p>\n<p>I was astounded that a senior manager could make such statements and draw such a conclusion. That was not logical. I thought that the senior manager was joking or something. My direct supervisor assured me that the senior manager was serious.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But,&#8221; I protested, &#8220;a mature adult could not make such statements.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>My supervisor again assured me that the senior manager was serious, he could make such statements, and he would have Mr. Smith removed from the project.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But,&#8221; I continued with my protest, &#8220;we have other people from that agency working on our project. They are not idiots. They are not being dismissed. They are still here and contributing to our success.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>My youthful and idealistic objections did not change the situation. <strong><em>Implication<\/em><\/strong> ruled.<\/p>\n<p>The above are only two small examples of <strong><em>implication<\/em><\/strong> in the real world. Please contribute your examples in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips In part 1 of this post, I covered the mathematics and truth table of implication. Implication shows that If I accept something that I know is FALSE, I can prove anything else that I know is FALSE For example, if I accept that &#8220;1=2&#8221;, I can prove that &#8220;2=3&#8221;. I know that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13,10,3],"tags":[130,136,133,126],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-judgment","category-logic","category-people","category-technology","tag-judgment","tag-logic","tag-people","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/39"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}