2019-02-03

36: What Is Always Required of Any Decent Description

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Summary


I do not conform to prevalent explanations or terminologies? . . . I have to say that that is inevitable because many of prevalent explanations do not fulfill the requirement for being a decent description and therefore, have to be rejected. Here, I discuss what is always required of any decent description.

Topics


About: Truths
About: Knowing Truths
About: Decent Descriptions

The table of contents of this article

Starting Context


  • The reader has a logical mind.
  • The reader has a fair mind.

Note

UNOUNO

Target Context


  • The reader will understand what is always required of any decent description.

Introduction


'Orientation' is meant for the passersby who don't stand in 'Starting Context' and/or aren't enthusiastic about 'Target Context'. It doesn't contain any new technical information and can be skipped by anyone who doesn't need any orientation.

Orientation


Hypothesizer 7
 As I have made some descriptions on some issues, on this Web site, I had to reject some prevalent explanations and make my own descriptions that were essentially different from prevalent explanations.

That was inevitable because the prevalent explanations did not make sense to me.

For example, the prevalent explanations on C++ "lvalue", "rvalue", "xvalue", "prvalue", and "glvalue" are unreasonable: while those categories are really the categories of expressions, not of values, the prevalent explanations state as though those categories are the categories of values. So, the prevalent explanations are mistaken even on what those categories categorize: the most fundamental preparatory point of the issue . . .

As one of my primal moral obligations is to tell only what I understand, I cannot blindly repeat any explanation that does not make sense to me, even if the explanation is official or is by an authority.

Also I had to reject some prevalent terminologies and make my own terminologies.

That was inevitable because the prevalent terminologies were unusable as the building blocks of any decent description.

For example, when what should be discussed are the categories of expressions, the terms that represent the categories of values are unusable for any decent description: the concepts that have to be identified are not given the names. And I cannot reuse such terms as "lvalue", "rvalue", "xvalue", "prvalue", and "glvalue" as the terms that represent the categories of expressions because they would be blatant misnomers: names like "~value" while the concepts represented by the names are not about any value . . .

As a critical role of any decent description is to clarify the involved concepts and the relationships between the concepts, it never can be made based on any inappropriate terminology that does not accurately identify the concepts that have to be identified, I must say.

. . . Are we trying to really understand things? . . . If so, we would inevitably reach the conclusion that many prevalent explanations and terminologies are utterly unacceptable.

Main Body

1: What Is the Primal Purpose of Any Description?


Hypothesizer 7
 What is the primal purpose of any description? For me, it is definitely to represent some truths accurately.

Of course, it may be different for some people, as any purpose is something that the person voluntarily conceives. In fact, for someone, it may be to deceive other people in order to achieve undue profits.

And someone may say that my purpose does not apply to descriptions in fictions. . . . But I say that my purpose applies to any description in any fiction all right: any description in any fiction is for accurately representing some truths of the fictitious world.

As my discussions in this article are based on that my purpose, they will not resonate with the people who do not share my purpose (the people who do not care about truths, but about their profits, for example).

2: What Is the Whole Truth and Any Aspect of the Whole Truth?


Hypothesizer 7
 Discussing 'truth' may seem like a digression as this article is on 'description', but as the primal purpose of any description is to represent some truths accurately, the concept of 'truth' has to be clarified first.

The whole truth of this universe is the whole reality in the space-time continuum.

So, there is only one whole truth of this universe, as is obvious.

However, any human being, or any being, cannot fathom the whole truth, at least at once, and takes on some aspects of the whole truth at a time.

Let me call any aspect of the whole truth as well as the whole truth, a truth.

As a metaphor, let me assume that a circular corn is the whole truth.

I (and I believe, anyone) cannot see the whole of the circular corn at once, and instead, see the circular corn from an angle at a time. The fact that the circular corn looks as a circle (because it is seen from right below the bottom) is an aspect of the whole truth. Note that that aspect is a 100% pure truth because the circular corn really looks so, although the aspect is not any whole truth.

3: What Is Any Absolute Truth?


Hypothesizer 7
 There are some people who claim that there is no absolute truth. What do they mean?

For me, 'absolute truth' means a truth that is 100% true, and of course, there are absolute truths.

In fact, the whole truth is an absolute truth, and any aspect of the whole truth is an absolute truth.

In the above example of the circular corn, the recognition that "The body looks as a circle from right below the bottom" is an absolute truth, because it is 100% true, while a recognition like "The body is a circle." is not true. So, a recognition on an aspect of the whole truth can be an absolute truth if the recognition does not fail to grasp the fact that the recognition is on the single aspect, not on the whole.

4: Let Us Not Be Deceived by Some Fallacies Regarding Absolute Truths


Hypothesizer 7
 Let us really understand this: "We cannot grasp any absolute truth." is absolutely different from "There is no absolute truth.".

While the former may be true, the latter is blatantly false.

Any person who claims the latter based on the former is like a blind man who claims that there is no light because he cannot see light.

Also let us really understand this: "We cannot reach any absolute truth." does not mean "We cannot approach any absolute truth."

While the former may be true, the latter is blatantly false.

Any person who refuses to rectify his or her fallacies on the pretext that no one can reach any absolute truth anyway is like a student who refuses to study on the pretext that no one can get the perfect score anyway.

. . . It is not all-or-nothing. An attitude like "As I cannot do it perfectly, it does not matter however poorly I do it." is a problem.

5: "Alternative Facts"?


Hypothesizer 7
 "Alternative facts"? . . .

Certainly, there are multiple aspects of the whole truth, but there is no multiple truths of a single aspect.

For example, "How many people have attended an inauguration of a president, in the reality" is an aspect while "How many people have attended an inauguration of a president, in the president's delusion" is another aspect, and the two numbers can be naturally very different.

Certainly, the latter, as well as the former, is a physical fact: some electronic pulses ran through the head of a delusional man.

However, the former aspect has a single number, and we have been talking on the former aspect. . . . If you are concerned about your delusional tendency, would you consult a psychiatrist, please, Mr. President?

6: How to Approach the Whole Truth


Hypothesizer 7
 Our ultimate goal is to reach the whole truth, but certainly, it is difficult, even if it is possible.

However, whether reaching the whole truth is possible or not, we can approach the whole truth, which is what we are supposed to do.

But how? . . . The only possible way (as far as I know) is to collect as many aspect truths as possible and build a hypothesis that consistently explains all the aspect truths.

"But such any hypothesis is not guaranteed to be true . . .". Certainly. That is the reason why we have to keep collecting more aspect truths and revising the hypothesis.

A prevalent fallacy is to reject inconvenient aspect truths and claim a hypothesis that consistently explains all the aspect truths that can be consistently explained by the hypothesis.

If a hypothesis is really true, it can explain any aspect of the whole truth; if even a single aspect truth contradicts the hypothesis, it is time for us to admit the imperfectness of the hypothesis and improve the hypothesis.

7: There Can Be Multiple Admissible Hypotheses at a Time


Hypothesizer 7
 Certainly, there can be multiple admissible hypotheses at a time. In fact, any hypothesis that consistently explains all the so-far-known aspect truths has to be accepted as admissible.

It is futile to squabble over which hypothesis should be adopted right now; let us collect more aspect truths and examine whether each hypothesis can consistently explain the newly-collected aspect truths. Any hypothesis that has failed to consistently explain the newly-collected aspect truths has to be revised or disposed.

An important thing is, nobody has any necessity or right to boast that he or she has been correct: the best any human intelligence can do is to sincerely build a hypothesis that consistently explains all the so-far-known aspect facts, and which of such hypotheses will turn out to be consistent with future aspect facts is just a matter of luck.

8: What Is Always Required of Any Decent Description


Hypothesizer 7
 The above discussion inevitably leads to the requirement for any decent description: to be consistent with all the so-far-known aspect facts.

Of course, as any person can make some mistakes, some inadvertent inconsistencies can sneak into a description, and as no person can know all the so-far-known-to-humankind aspect facts, a description may inadvertently contradict some so-far-known aspect facts.

What is required of any person is not any perfection, but the sincerity that continues to endeavor to make any description as decent as possible.

9: A Standard Document Is Not Always Right


Hypothesizer 7
 Someone may think that any standard document (for example, the document of C++ standard) is always right because the standard document dictates what are right, but that is not necessarily true.

One reason is that a standard document may include some inconsistencies. I declare that any document that includes any inconsistency can never be completely right, whether the document is a standard document, a document by an authority, a document by a dictator, or a bible.

Ideally, any standard document is supposed to dictate what are right, but in the reality, a standard document is not any accurate representation of the standard, which exists in some person's head or some people's heads.

The reason why any discrepancy between the standard and the standard document occurs is that it is not that the standard document is written first and the standard materializes as the literal interpretation of the standard document, but it is that the standard materializes first in someone's head or some people's heads and the standard document is written in a similitude of the standard. So, if the standard document is poorly written, the standard document can differ very much from the standard.

A reason why a standard document can be poorly written is that the author does not accurately understand the standard: the author is not necessarily any conceiver of the standard, and someone's being a conceiver does not necessarily mean that he or she understands the standard perfectly. . . . Yes, in fact, often, a conceiver of an idea does not understand the idea very well.

For example, the conceivers of the C++ standard seem not to understand that so-called "lvalue", "rvalue", "xvalue", "prvalue", and "glvalue" are not really the categories of values. In fact, the conceivers of the C++ standard seem to have intended so-called "~value"s to be the categories of values, but when they decided the details on what exactly were "~value"s, they have turned "~value"s into the categories of expressions whatever their original intention was; as the details dictate the behaviors of C++, "~value"s are really the categories of expressions, but they misunderstand that "~value" are the categories of values, trapped in their original intention. . . . But I am not interested in their intention, but the behaviors of C++, and I have to understand "~value"s as the categories of expressions.

As in such a case, some intentions of the conceivers of the standard are sometimes written in a standard document, but such intentions do not necessarily accord with the behaviors that are determined by some detailed specifications, which (the behaviors) are what I have to know, not the conceivers's intentions that are not realized in the behaviors.

Another reason why a standard document can be poorly written is that the author is not articulate even if he or she understands the standard perfectly.

So, a standard document could be wrong, and we can and should denounce the standard document as being wrong.

10: The Conclusion and Beyond


Hypothesizer 7
 Now, I seem to understand what is always required of any decent description.

As the primal purpose of any description is to represent some truths accurately, the requirement for the description is determined based on the purpose.

Although to reach the whole truth is the ultimate goal, the best one can do is to collect more and more aspect truths and maintain a hypothesis that explains all the so-far-known aspect truths.

Accordingly, what the description has to do is to accurately represent the hypothesis, and as the decency of the hypothesis can be judged only by its consistency with all the so-far-known aspect truths, the decency of the description is judged by the same criterion.

Of course, there can be multiple decent hypotheses at a time, and it is futile to argue any superiority of a hypothesis over another at the time: let us just admit that such multiple hypotheses are possible and search for more aspect truths.

What is required here is not any perfection, but the sincerity that continues to endeavor to make any description as decent as possible.

References
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