Sinabro

This is why I get disgusted reading my old … “writings”, for lack of a better word (perhaps I could add another meaning to the wonderful word “barf”).

Here’s something I wrote in the old days when I used to troll UseNet a lot (the last response being mine, it alternates):

> > Simply put, let
> > P: person A is intelligent
> > Q: person A is able to graduate (from whatever school)
> >
> > I would assert that P->Q is true, but its converse is not.
>
> Simply put, if you would assert that
> P -> Q
> is true, then you would assert that
> not Q -> not P
> is true as well.
> In other words, using your choice of P and Q, you would assert that
> "if person A is not able to graduate implies
> that person A is not intelligent".

Hmm, unexpected thrust--as I was thinking about the other side of
logic. So you do know about contrapositives, eh? I think it would have
been more elegant if you said above, P -> Q is equivalent to not Q ->
not P. Or, P -> Q has the same truth table as not Q -> not P. 'Makes
you sound like a math (or computer science, as it happens) person,
whether you are one or not.

Of course, the very obvious problem with this reply is … it completely misses the point, as well as a counter-reply so obvious that I had to be dumb and blind to have missed it: i.e. how many of the real “dumb” population is hidden in the population that did graduate from high school (and hence assumed intelligent by inept statisticians)?

After all, that’s the implication of my initial argument. Sigh. What can I say. I am positively dumb and stupid now, but apparently it was possible to be dumber and stupider—as I was when I was younger.