And since Bubblefish cannot answer my rebuttal on his critique of my logic system, I will declare myself the winner. My sliding scale system clearly has more applicability to describing the real world.
I will note that I like Jimbob's addition of applying it to 2 axes. Extrapolating further, we can apply this to 3 axes, and have 8 total outcome fields. Furthermore, we can extrapolate to any number of axes, provided the labeling system can be applied to so many variables.
Z and Jimbob, what do you think of this multi-dimensional sliding scale system? How would you come up with a consistent labeling scheme?
Yup, I think the more arcane or baroque one can make the system, the greater chance that one can fool some lackwits into thinking it is profound.
how about these axes for a four-d system:
True-False
A
Confidence
R
Metaconfidnece
S
Other
E
The Neccesity of the Third Value in Dialectic in the News.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/25/60minutes/main2728375_page2.shtml
George Tennet:
"We don't torture people," he says. "I want you to listen to me. The context is it's post-9/11. I've got reports of nuclear weapons in New York City, apartment buildings that are gonna be blown up, planes that are gonna fly into airports all over again, plot lines that I don't know. I don't know what's going on inside the United States, and I'm struggling to find out where the next disaster is going to occur. Everybody forgets one central context of what we lived through: the palpable fear that we felt on the basis of the fact that there was so much we did not know."
How would Z's OS 2x2 handle this situation, I wonder?
BF, If I understand your objection to the sliding scale it is that it is ceratainly true or certainly false that the statement "the earth is round" is more-or less true?
How does this help anyone? in the situation abouve, do you assign all the reports to "mystery" and then do what?
The conventional response would be to assign these reports differing levels of credibility, and attempt to find out more, and act on those most credible reports.
With WMD's in Iraq do you say that Saddam Hussain knew, so he could confirm either True or False, whilst the CIA didn't so should assign a value of Mystery? The solution is obvious, the CIA should have asked Saddam Hussain if he had WMDs...
BF's system seems to be a complex way of failing to understand something. Used in its optimal situations, it becomes a complex way of stating only the most obvious aspects, as opposed to being actively misleading.
Mnny situations can't be reduced to a number, assigning them an arbitary value does nothing except inspire false confidence.
BF, please explain how a "thinker" and a "feeler" would react in the WMD example. I don't feel as "where there's no sense, there's no feeling".
Jim
