It seems to me that an important part of a consistent definition of “opposite” is that the opposite of the opposite of something is that thing. So, if the opposite of happiness is boredom, then the opposite of boredom must be happiness—not sadness, not interest, not love. By extension, there can only be one set of equivalent things that is the opposite of any one thing. Poets might use the term in a looser sense, but I don’t see how programmers or AI philosophers can and still retain useful meaning.
I suspect it retains some use in some situations, but I also suspect those tend more towards the less-formal context like the original post here. I’m tempted to say I don’t see a specific use in highly technical discussions, however I have low confidence in my ability to make statements like that accurately. (And I think that if I thought about individual words without any context, I’d end up scratching so many off the list as to render discussion rather difficult.)
In other words: no, I cannot. On noticing this, it seems like we should taboo the word.
I’m not a programmer by any means, but it seems to me that it might indeed be useful if an AI can generalize from following directions where you want to go right at an intersection to reach your destination, so [opposite] that to left on the way back, to situations where you accelerated to a hundred meters per second to reach your traveling speed, so [opposite] that to decelerate to a stop so you don’t crash at your destination. Or if you heated a sample up by 50 degrees celsius, [opposite] that by cooling it 50 degrees celsius to reach the original temperature. Or, if it can quantify a person’s happiness, then if they lost 50 hedons when their puppy was run over, then [opposite] that to bring them back to their previous satisfaction level.
It seems to me that an important part of a consistent definition of “opposite” is that the opposite of the opposite of something is that thing. So, if the opposite of happiness is boredom, then the opposite of boredom must be happiness—not sadness, not interest, not love. By extension, there can only be one set of equivalent things that is the opposite of any one thing. Poets might use the term in a looser sense, but I don’t see how programmers or AI philosophers can and still retain useful meaning.
Can you clarify how any meaning of “opposite” is useful to programmers or AI philosophers?
I suspect it retains some use in some situations, but I also suspect those tend more towards the less-formal context like the original post here. I’m tempted to say I don’t see a specific use in highly technical discussions, however I have low confidence in my ability to make statements like that accurately. (And I think that if I thought about individual words without any context, I’d end up scratching so many off the list as to render discussion rather difficult.)
In other words: no, I cannot. On noticing this, it seems like we should taboo the word.
I’m not a programmer by any means, but it seems to me that it might indeed be useful if an AI can generalize from following directions where you want to go right at an intersection to reach your destination, so [opposite] that to left on the way back, to situations where you accelerated to a hundred meters per second to reach your traveling speed, so [opposite] that to decelerate to a stop so you don’t crash at your destination. Or if you heated a sample up by 50 degrees celsius, [opposite] that by cooling it 50 degrees celsius to reach the original temperature. Or, if it can quantify a person’s happiness, then if they lost 50 hedons when their puppy was run over, then [opposite] that to bring them back to their previous satisfaction level.