Your use may be technically correct but it is very misleading. If you simply say “do A or B”, it’s clear that doing one is sufficient so a person who wants to save effort will only do one. Specifying “xor” therefore suggests that there is some additional harm to doing both, beyond nonminimality.
I got that usage of ‘XOR’ from one of Pinker’s books I believe. But given my utilitarianism, I’m postponing my knowledge so that those who suffer mohammed-level pain stop experiencing it, and using simple ‘OR’
Ok, I need then to know what established symbol means: “do precisely one of A_1 through A_n”
“Do precisely one of A_1 through A_n”. There’s nothing wrong with writing things out longhand.
(Except, as Perplexed points out, I don’t think that’s really what you mean—would it really be such a problem to do more than one?)
If the purpose is to be mininmal, yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_or
“one or the other but not both.” From Wikipedia.
I begin to think I was not that wrong...…
Your use may be technically correct but it is very misleading. If you simply say “do A or B”, it’s clear that doing one is sufficient so a person who wants to save effort will only do one. Specifying “xor” therefore suggests that there is some additional harm to doing both, beyond nonminimality.
Do A ∈{A1, A2, … An} ?
Although in this case, I don’t think there’s any harm to come from doing more than one of A1 through An; wouldn’t “at least one” work better?
I got that usage of ‘XOR’ from one of Pinker’s books I believe. But given my utilitarianism, I’m postponing my knowledge so that those who suffer mohammed-level pain stop experiencing it, and using simple ‘OR’