Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 November 8

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November 8

Pedantry and Possibility

So, this question is the result of idle thoughts during my drive to work, it is highly pedantic, but I find it interesting. Suppose that you are in the woods and hear a noise through the bushes, a friend remarks one of the following "There possibly exists a possible bear behind the bush", "There is a possible bear behind the bush", or "There possibly exists a bear behind the bush". Do these three express the same thing or subtly different things? And how does "possibly" change in scope and meaning?

The first seems to indicate that there may be an object that is capable of being a bear, and therefore may be a bear - as in "it may be a twig or it may be an animal, the animal may be a bear". The second seems to indicate that the thing making the noise may be a bear, but also would permit that it may be a bear. The third seems to be nearly identical to the second, but instead of saying "That which makes the noise may be a bear" it is saying "There may be a thing responsible for the noise, such a thing may be a bear".

Is there any thing we could replace bears and bushes with that would make a difference in meanings? (Supposing that they do all reduce down to the same thing in the bear case). Finally, are there are any other such sentences that could be added to the mix that are, basically, the same, but perhaps not when over-analyzed? Thank you for any insight, and for engaging what is, again, pedantry at its finest:-)Phoenixia1177 (talk) 06:05, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Not pedantry at all, if that word implies some apology for academic nitpicking (I think it does, in most usage). It goes to precise language, which in turn goes to clear communication, and clear communication is often important.

For now, I'll just respond to your question, "Do these three express the same thing or subtly different things?" Certainly not the same thing, and I think the difference is more than subtle. Each "possible" hedges something different, resulting in a completely different meaning. And you omitted one, ""There possibly exists a possible bear behind the possible bush." Are you sure that's a bush? ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 06:20, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

As I see it, the first indicates that there may be something, which is possibly a bear, behind the bush; the second indicates that there is definitely something, which is possibly a bear, behind the bush; while the third indicates that there may be a bear behind the bush. Plasmic Physics (talk) 06:22, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

"There may be a bear behind the bush." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:35, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Modal logic might be a useful article to consider, if you'd like to go into the fine technical details. Tevildo (talk) 14:42, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Practical logic tells you that if you really think there's a bear nearby, you probably won't be talking in multi-syllabic words. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:20, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

• "Possible bear" is a category mistake. There are possible solutions (to problems), answers (to questions), routes (for travel), winners (of contests). But not possible green, possible bears, or possible inches in any normal sense: bears, pure green (as a wavelength), and inches do not exist "of, to, or for." Possible as an adjective normally deals with goal oriented action and planning. Used as an adverb it has a slightly different meaning of chance or potential. The difference is one of accident versus essence. A person who is a possible winner is a person who might possibly win by chance (accidence), while a bear is a bear by essence, and there's no chance about whether he's a bear. μηδείς (talk) 17:46, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, not really. "There is (definitely) something behind the bush, which may be a bear", and "There is possibly a bear behind the bush (or there may be nothing behind it)" cover the OP's second and third examples. "Possible bear" isn't really idiomatic, I agree, but it's not meaningless. Tevildo (talk) 21:05, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

No, it's simply wrong. You are assuming they meant "possibly" but used bad English.

If I said, "That's a likely story," you couldn't respond "I am 100% sure it's a story, not a poem." My statement would be an ironic statement that I doubted that what you said described any truth.

Entities aren't 'possible' or even 'likely'. Situations are possible. "There being a bear behind that bush is possible" is a possible sentence. "It's likely that's a story," could be answered with, it was meant as a true account.

I have a possible bear in my pocket is a sequence of sounds that do not even have a truth value unless you assume some bizarre implied context. The OP did not ask if there was some bizarre implied context, so given what he's said, the answer is, it's nonsense. μηδείς (talk) 01:39, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

How about "There is a possible predator behind the bush" / "There is possibly a predator behind the bush"? Why is "predator" meaningful but "bear" nonsense (rather than unidiomatic)? Or is my first sentence nonsense as well? Tevildo (talk) 14:31, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

There is a possible predator works much better, because what you are implying an abstract "candidacy" of an animal (the entity) that is a meat eater (the "situation"). It's like saying, now that Jon Smith, he's a possible future president. (Potential is a better word here) You are saying he might fit the abstract role of being president. You would not say, now that's a possible Barack Obama in the motorcade.

Of course you can always make these things sensible by a lot of prior assumptions. If it's implicit and already assumed by context that you are looking for actors to play Barack Obama, or if you know he's in a crowd, along with 99 look-alikes, then "There's a possible Obama," makes sense logically. But you wouldn't walk into a mensroom at the white house, see two feet in a stall, and say "There's a possible Barack Obama on the toilet." It would be like talking of the anger of the mathematical number three, the weight of an angle, or the location of truth. See Category, esp. 2.1, 3rd paragraph and category mistake. μηδείς (talk) 21:29, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

• You probably just want to read up a bit on modal logic, where whole volumes have been written about this very sort of thing, teasing apart should/could statements, oughts/mights, etc. Then you can wrestle with figuring out if Epistemic modality or Alethic modality is the better framework for analyzing the utterances. The one thing you have to accept is that most utterances in natural language fail to have one-to-one mappings to some expression in formal logic. But, people who work in logic (or at least know and enjoy it) tend to speak in ways such that the translation to formal language is much less ambiguous. This reminds me of one of my favorite jokes:

“ An engineer, a physicist, and a logician are on their first train ride through the English countryside. The engineer gazes out the window, and sees a black sheep amongst a herd. "Oh, I didn't know they had black sheep in England," he remarks. The physicist rejoins with a smug correction: "Actually, we only know that there is at least one black sheep in England." The logician rolls his eyes in derision - "There exists one sheep in England, half of which is black." ”

Does that help? SemanticMantis (talk) 19:35, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Oh, and note the example phrase "You can't water that plant too much" -- this can have several logical interpretations, some of which are about possibility, some are about necessary truth. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:34, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

If there was a herd of sheep, wasn't the logician ignoring some evidence? Nil Einne (talk) 12:57, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

User talk:Nil Einne, no. It's all one phrase, i.e. the logical meaning comes in the statement as a whole, and he's reporting everything he knows about black sheep. All the logician knows is that there is at least one sheep in England that has the property that half of it is black. I mean sure, he could have said "there are at least [number in herd that I see] sheep in England, and one of them is half black", but that doesn't tell us any more about black sheep. It does clearly state the fact that the one sheep that is half black is not the only sheep in England. Another common confusion is the logical implications of number statements. "I have three fingers on my left hand" is a true statement for me (and most readers) :) SemanticMantis (talk) 20:23, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

But why are only black sheeps relevant? The statement seems to be referring to sheep in England in general not sheep in England with the character black. The other staments by comparison, even if not supported by the evidence, did not. The most obvious assumption from the statement would be that the logician only has evidence for one sheep in England which isn't true, not that they only have evidence for one sheep with a black character. The question of whether the statement is technically true or not is largely beside the point. There's no good reason for the logician to ignore the evidence at hand, they should either phrase their comment to avoid such an implication or present the evidence they have. Nil Einne (talk) 21:02, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

(The logician actually said: "At least one sheep that is at least half-black").

"I saw a man the other day with a more than average number of legs." Cue endless arguments about "average" with the interpretation of: "mean", "median" or "mode". When you apply strict logical meanings to things, life gets very difficult and good jokes are too easily spoiled. SteveBaker (talk) 21:05, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Those jokes don't seem comparable. The first joke was a logician who with derious made a statement that while perhaps technically true, introduced an unnecessary ambigiouty and confusion in to their discussion which didn't formerly exist from the previous two statements which may or may not have been true but wasn't supported by the observational evidence. There are numerous ways the logicians response and joke could be formulated to avoid this, including introducing someone recognising the flaw in the logicians statement so I don't see the harm in pointing out the IMO flaws in the formulation. Your later example is a more typical joke and whe it could be formulated in numerous ways to introduce or removr ambigiouty, that's more part of the charm. Nil Einne (talk) 21:14, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

User:Nil Einne The black sheep are relevant because that is what is being discussed in the story. To risk beating a dead sheep: the original statement is expressing interest in the fact that there are black sheep in England. The first response is a chastisement on precise speech, and points out that the viewers at present can only logically assert the existence of one black sheep, whereas the first statement could be interpreted to posit more than one (note the joke depends on "sheep" being the plural of "sheep"). The logician takes the correction to the extreme, and says there is one sheep in England, half of which is black. This is supposed be funny, because we would generally consider the case that the statement hedges against to be absurd (i.e. it might be the case that the sheep is not all black, but the viewers would not know, because they only see half.) Anyway, to me there is no logical ambiguity in the logician's statement- there is one sheep in England that has the property of having half-blackness. Are you objecting because you thing he's saying that there is only one, or exactly one sheep in England? As I tried to explain above (poorly), in logical speak "there is one sheep in England" is true, as is "Nil Einne has one eye,"(at least I assume). This is because of the way we formalize propositions in natural language into logical statements. Sure, we commonly say "at least one" to make things clear, but in logical discourse an unquantified "one" is the same thing as "at least one" - it would be silly an wrong to assume that all mentions of numbers come with an implied quantifier of exactness. Thus my punchline and Steve's re-phrasing are logically equivalent. Of course reasonable people can disagree on such things, that's part of the point of the question. I agree that the logician could have said many other true statements, but IMO that would ruin the joke :) SemanticMantis (talk) 22:51, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

And another anecdote of logical word play for [[User:Phoenixia1177 et al.:

“ [T]here was Moore seated by the fire with a basket upon his knees. "Moore", I said, "do you have any apples in that basket?" "No", he replied, and smiled seraphically, as was his wont. I decided to try a different logical tack. "Moore", I said, "do you then have some apples in that basket?" "No", he replied, leaving me in a logical cleft stick from which I had but one way out. "Moore", I said, "do you then have apples in that basket?" "Yes", he replied. And from that day forth, we remained the very closest of friends. ”

[1] staring Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:34, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

UK - Audience Laughing/Clapping At Random Quiz Show Hosts and Contestants

Is this a legitimate job? Do they get paid to make it sound like people actually care? I can clap and laugh - been doing it since my motor skills developed, around 40 years ago. How do I get into this easy, mindless job, where I sit and pretend to laugh when someone holds up a plackard saying "Laugh Now", or clap when it says "Clap Now"? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 15:34, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

I can clap and laugh— Gizza job? Sorry, first thing I thought of when I read this. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 16:19, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

The audience is usually primed to laugh and clap, they want to be entertained and the contestant to win. They aren't commanded to laugh at any specific moment. They are told it is okay to laugh or applaud when those lights come on, and both laughter and clapping are hugely contagious, otherwise they are asked not to be to loud, or they will interrupt the show. I once deliberately disrupted a political speech by telling my six or so colleagues at the conference to start clapping when I did. The speaker would pause for breath at what was not a "punchline" but I would clap, my colleagues joined me, and the rest of the audience followed, while the speaker stood there with a puzzled look on her face. In a genuine audience this will happen spontaneously. μηδείς (talk) 18:00, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

And tickets to be in the audience are generally free and oversubscribed (see applausestore.com ). — Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])

That depends on the TV show. For some new or not particularly popular shows they offer audience members priority tickets for other oversubscribed shows or free beer etc. to get enough audience. JMiall₰ 00:00, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

86.175.118.193 (talk) 20:24, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Formal claqueurs are still employed by the Bolshoi Ballet, according to our article, but I don't believe they've ever been used by a TV station. See also warm-up man. Tevildo (talk) 21:00, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

When I was in the audience of TV shows in Australia, an "applause" sign would be illuminated when they wanted the audience to clap. --TrogWoolley (talk) 22:59, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

As usual, most of the answers have no real substance and are simply anecdotal and completely unworthy of being part of an encyclopaedic response to the question. There are some interesting discussions about laugh tracks (aka "canned laughter"), in particular with regard to significant shows like M*A*S*H. Mostly, UK quiz shows are hosted by well-known comedians (e.g. Alexander Armstrong, Bradley Walsh, Joe Pasquale, Michael Barrymore etc) but it's been no different for some time (e.g. Les Dawson, Bob Monkhouse, Larry Grayson, Leslie Crowther, Les Dennis, Bruce Forsyth etc) so it might just be that your "easy, mindless job" is actually easy because you actually find the host genuinely funny and you chose to go to that show. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:20, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

The audiences for BBC recordings are usually given free tickets [2]. There's no indication that they get paid as well. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 15:56, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

There will also usually be a warm-up comic who will get the audience into a laughing and applauding mood before the show proper starts. When I went to the recording of Whose Line is it Anyway many years ago, they asked us at the start (after the warm-up) for a "dry" laugh and round of applause, that wasn't mixed with any sound from the performers, so they could use it to fill any sound gaps in the final edit, but they didn't instruct us when to laugh or clap otherwise. --Nicknack009 (talk) 18:40, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

UK Politics question about Cameron, Miliband and Clegg.

Has David Cameron, Ed Miliband or Nick Clegg ever had a what we would call a 'normal job Perhaps working at a supermarket or waiting at a restaurant? --Teaxodarty (talk) 18:35, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Did you read their articles? David Cameron#Early political career, Ed Miliband#Early political career, and Nick Clegg#Careers outside politics will tell you what they did after they left their respective universities. CS Miller (talk) 20:10, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Maybe they worked in supermarkets (or wherever) before they even left school, or while at uni. Those sections would not reveal such detail. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:58, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

You've left out Nigel Farage who went straight from high school to commodities trading. Our article says he was abandoned at 5 by his father. He seems to have chosen ambition over mediocrity or the soft life of university followed by politics sans work experience. μηδείς (talk) 05:11, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, commodities trading is such a hard life...... Whichever way you spin it Farage is just a loonie, and very dangerous one at that, and the less he's discussed, the better. The OP was clearly asking for the three main parties, not fringe idiots. Fgf10 (talk) 09:16, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Your rather rabid, censorial political bias is noted.

Farage was not raised in an aristocratic family or one with a political dynasty, he did not go to university and immediately draw a salary afterwards from a government sinecure. Commodities trading is extremely stressful, and involves a fiduciary responsibility to one's clients. But no, unlike me, he apparently never farmed, cooked, loaded UPS trucks by hand, or waited tables. Bully for him. μηδείς (talk) 18:01, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

By "high school" Medeis means public school - specifically Dulwich College which currently has day fees of £5801 per term, exclusive of any exam fees. DuncanHill (talk) 17:33, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

The other party leaders didn't go to private schools? I am not sure what his doing good enough on tests to get admitted a private school has to do with getting one's nails dirty. Do the majority of British HS students have to do the food preparation and janitorial duties where they study? μηδείς (talk) 19:35, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I neither said nor implied anything about where the other partly leaders were educated. The primary means of selection for public school is parental wealth, followed by parental connexions. It is wrong to talk of British High School students - we don't have high schools on the American model. Farago likes to project a "bloke in the saloon bar" image, but his background is one of great unearnt privilege. To say he chose to go into commodities trading instead of going to uni is also rather odd - the great majority of able students do not have such a choice, as they lack the connexions and capital backing to become commodities traders. DuncanHill (talk) 23:09, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

"Farago"? And here I assumed you had some rational point, but I see it's just class envy. In the US, public high school students usually feel sorry for the kids that have to wear uniforms. μηδείς (talk) 02:18, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Most British schoolchildren wear uniforms, not just those in public schools. You were trying to make him out to be some sort of hard-working go-getter, when in fact he's just another public school old boy working the old boy network. Not class envy (I'd be fascinated to know what class you imagine me to belong to), just realism. See also pun. DuncanHill (talk) 02:51, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I actually went to Chatham House Grammar School - which is the school that Edward Heath (former prime minister) attended...definitely not some fancy private school! At least three other MP's (Members of Parliament) and two ambassadors are fellow "Old Ruymians" - so just on a sample of one school, it's clear that plenty of UK politicians did not go to private schools...although I'll grant that the statistics of the matter doubtless favor that kind of a background. SteveBaker (talk) 22:11, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, exactly, and see how well you have turned out? The OP is long gone, the question was tendentious, and the reaction to introducing UKIP:(UKIP received the greatest number of votes (27.49%) of any British party in the 2014 European Parliament election and gained 11 extra MEPs for a total of 24.[86] The party won seats in every region of Great Britain, including its first in Scotland, which Farage called a "breakthrough".[87] It was the first time in over a century that a party other than Labour or Conservatives won the most votes in a UK-wide election.[87] Farage said the result would change British politics fundamentally.[88]) absolutely fascinating. μηδείς (talk) 02:18, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Historic car prices

My curiosity has been piqued by a piece of fiction I've just read:

1. How much would a new Jaguar XJ6 cost in 1973?
2. What would be a reasonable price for a two-year-old XJ6 ("One lady owner, very clean, never raced or rallied") at the same time?

Tevildo (talk) 20:25, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

I found Octane which says that a 1973-1977 JAGUAR XJ6 Coupé was "Price at launch: £5480". Alansplodge (talk) 21:12, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! So, £2000 second-hand wouldn't be unreasonable? (This would be for the Mk1 rather than the Mk2). Quite a considerable sum of money in those days. Tevildo (talk) 21:59, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

And Oxford Economic Papers - The markup for lemons: quality and uncertainty in American and British used-car markets c. 1953–73 quotes a 1989 study which says that "First-year depreciation ranges from 35% to 40%. Second-year depreciation is about 20%...." (page 3 marked "i33"). Alansplodge (talk) 22:06, 8 November 2014 (UTC)