I get it. You can see no possible situation where the switch can be both safe and unsafe at the same time with the only difference being person A or person B.

Fell free to clarify your claim now so that you are not wrong before...



*edited to add an appology. I appologise, as you have already clarified your claim well after the fact of initial claim.*






So bushido, do you always make assumptions on things which you are sure about? It would explain a lot......

I do especially when I am giving my audience the benefit of the doubt.

If I tell you 1 and 1 is 2, we are assuming I am using arithmetic. If I say no knowledge changes, it really does mean NONE.

WHEW, that was hard. But I KNEW it would be hard, so I added a little disclaimer about how you cant change the situation or context. But I should have known those big words would confuse some . . . and here I thought I was being cautious.
Dam, and here I thought you finally got it. My imagination is quite good if I do say so myself. I can imagine millions of situations, not that this matters.

It does not matter peter. The switch does not even need to exist, only the belief that it does, and that its safety is the same for both people. The actual facts can be quite different, but if the person giving the info tells you one thing, and another person something else, all that matters is he purposefully told someone something he does not believe to be true.

Knowledge of its safety is what cannot change.
That he tells two people different things cannot change.

Otherwise you can switch the situation infinitely and the outcome remain the same, that one person gets a lie, the other gets what is believed to be true.

That's moving the goal posts. That was never specified in your original claim...


So your imagination DOES matter without that restriction.

That is a part of the knowledge being the same. Again the switches dont even need to exist, so long as the information giver has the same knowledge.

Peter, there are no goal posts. This was just a fun thread where we could get together and think about this topic. As usual you turn it into a pissing match.

Hey, if you want a pissing match, I can piss with more precision and futher than you in that too...

The knowledge being the same means no change of knowledge during the course of the experiment, NOT that it was either safe or not for both parties.

It's quite funny that you expect people to assume things then cry like a baby when they assume something contrary to your beliefs.

You will continue to deny the truth that my conclusion of uncertainty was correct.

He did lie if you take the question and his knowledge literally.

Joe Knew Jill was also in the room as he responded to her question.

What Joe did was assume that Jill meant anyone besides herself and Joe.

Pan,

I'll grant that your conclusion was correct. You've just not argued for it very well.

creative, I saw that and commend you for your honesty.

It really doesn't matter whether I've argued it well or not, that is only your opinion. Perhaps you just didn't understand it well?

Now you are gonna have a hard time convincing bushido of that "claim".

Duly noted and appreciated. Just trying to give credit where credit is due and help matters out when I can.



But it does matter whether or not one argues their position well. I mean, that is the only way to allow another the ability to see how we've reached our conclusions. There is no better way to know whether or not we can agree with what is being claimed than to see it put into an intelligible, inoffensive, and valid form of argument. It is also an indication of whether or not the debate will yield something useful.

The opinion bit is unnecessary though, wouldn't you say? I mean, of course it is my opinion. Pointing that out does not get us anywhere more useful, assuming that is, that everyone here realizes that we're all giving our opinions. I grant that we all do. It is how the opinions are being expressed and thought about that matters most.

Regarding my opinion concerning the quality of your argument, I didn't quite grasp that the conclusion you reached held good until I did the work myself. That did not happen until after reading what MonkeyBite had written and very carefully re-reading bushido's initial example(argument). I would think, had our(meaning you and I) conversation been less ego-driven and more reason driven that we could have worked things out without the need for another like MonkeyBite to shed light. Although, I must again thank him/her for that.



As a result of the parenthesis, I'm not sure what claim you're referring to. You and he still seem to be arguing about whether or not you changed the context. It is, once again, the ego-driven part that suffocates mutual understanding. I still agree with him that you did. However, what I'm also saying here is that that did not need to be done in order to prove your point. In other words, I am in complete agreement with your conclusion that we cannot be certain whether or not bushido lied to either person or both or neither, because based upon what was given - without adding to the context - it could be the case that he lied to one, to both, or to neither. Here's how I'd argue for that position...

Without change in the speaker's knowledge, we must assume something that is not given.

The missing bit of necessary information is whether or the act of activating the switch is dangerous regardless of who activates it. If that is assumed to be the case, then bushido must be lying to one or the other. If that is assumed to not be the case, then we cannot be certain either way.

The problem is that we must assume something to conclude anything at all, because the example does not provide enough information.

--

So, as we can see, it is possible to argue for your position in a manner that I would understand, because I've just argued the relevant points that you were attempting to make earlier. That is my considered opinion. Now what criterion you use to measure how well you've argued your own position, is of course, entirely up to you. Feel free to ignore what I've set out here if you like.

I certainly have my days...

Really?

If the only element missing is the informer actually believing a safety element was involved then you should just add that.

It is the most dishonest thing in a discussion to carry on like this. (Peter I am talking to you, your inability to play along makes you a troll)

I have no problem with my initial quick 5 minute setup being amended. Just do it, dont make up all this crap.

The informer believed an element of safety was involved in pulling the switch, why becuase safety was a word in the setup, and no one talks about safety with a lack of danger. Without even a small element of danger, safety makes no sense.

You can change this infinitely, as long as the information that is known is believed to apply consistently across the receivers (this is what I mean by knowledge of the informer), then one party is receiving a lie.

So long as the person giving the information believes the information is equally applicable (this is what I mean by context and situation), yet gives different information, he is lying to one or the other.

So while you may have not agreed, my meaning was coherent and logical.

It does not even matter if the switch exists, so long as the person who is providing the information believes it exists. The only assumption is that the information giver believes the information he is giving is purposeful. Without purpose no such setup can work, so it is more than honest to assume this element.

There is no purpose in talking about safety if no danger is believed to be involved.

Im done BTW, I cannot fathom Peters purpose here, and ultimately we are just feeding the troll.

Peter's purpose is irrelevant.

--

To posit that there is no need for a switch is rather odd. I mean, in such a case, what on earth would the speaker even be talking about? How could the speaker have knowledge of a non-existent switch? It should be a given that a switch exists, and that the switch is dangerous. If we are permitted to assume that there is no switch, then I see no warrant to object to assuming pretty much anything at all. Intent to deceive is nearly impossible to prove when discussing claims.

I disagree, the hows are unimportant.

I could have a grand mother who beat me in child hood and told me all red switches are bad, just doesn't matter why I believe the switch is dangerous, or not. Does not matter that a switch even exists.

The speaker need only believe that safety in regards to the switch is one or the other. A single datum, and yet provides two different datum to two people.

You can change the situation infinitely. Where one datum exists and two are espoused one is wrong. If the knowledge of the person espousing the datum does not change between the two events, he has lied to one.

Switches, scenarios dont matter. That the datum is singular, that the situation remains the same is what matters.

Its ok, this was a stupid thread to begin with. I have long ago lost interest. This is really basic information theory. In fact it seems to me this is an example of why people criticize philosophers. The actual math works, but people want the story to make sense, they change the context, the situation and imagine what is not presented. All useless.

This thread is an example of arguing to argue. Useless.

C'mon bushido. It's me... you know, your friend - creative?

--

You did posit knowledge. One cannot have knowledge of that which does not exist.

Actually early in this thread you corrected me and we both understand that in this thread, belief of knowledge is what is important, not actual knowledge.

I am going to present this symbolically, becuase words such as safety are being taken as more than a discrete datum which was not intended.

Each information transfer is called an event.

We have two information transfer events.
Event1 = E1
Event2 = E2

The information being transfered is a single datum.
Datum1 = D1
Datum2 = D2

The person providing the information is called the informer = I
The people who receive the datum are P1, and P2
The informer believes the datum is either D1, or D2.



E1.
I -----> D1 to P1

E2
I -----> D2 to P2

Someone is being lied to.
The only way this is not correct is if you change the belief of the accuracy of the datum of the informer. No other change matters.

D1, and D2 could even be abstract and need not even physically exist for this truth assessment to be accurate.

LOL!

You changed the context and situation of your original claim...

Your right I removed the context and situation because it was clear that was what was tripping people up even when I placed an all caps warning to not do that.

What do you think now peter?

I think you will do anything, including lie, to save face...

Show me. I want to understand how you reach that conclusion. I said you misunderstood what I was trying to do, how do you conclude it was other than a mistake vs, say a lie?

lol the irony.


Also you did not answer my question, what do you think about the symbolic representation? Does that match with the scenario I listed earlier? How?