FYI @Ben Pace, as a reader, I resonate with your annoyance in this conversation.
For me, I agree with many of Alex’s denotational claims, but feel like he’s also slipping in a bunch of connotation that I think is mostly wrong, but because he’s agreeing with the denotation for any particular point you bring up, it feels slippery, or like I’m having one pulled over on me.
It has a motte-and-bailey feel to it. Like Alex will tell me that “oh of course Heaven and Hell are not literal places under the earth and in the sky, that’s obviously dumb.” But, when he goes to talk with religious people, who might think that, or something not quite as wrong as that, but still something I think is pretty wrong, he’ll talk about heaven and hell, without clarifying what hem means, and it will seem like they’re agreeing, but the communitive property of agreement between you and Alex and Alex and the religious person doesn’t actually hold.
Like, it reads to me like Alex keeps trying to say “you and I Ben, we basically agree”, and as an onlooker, I don’t think you actually agree, on a bunch of important but so-far-inexplicit points.
[Ironically, if Alex does succeed in his quest of getting formal descriptions of all this religious stuff, that might solve this problem. Or at least solve it with religious people who also happen to be mathematicians.]
I don’t know if that description matches your experience, this is just my take as an onlooker.
FYI @Ben Pace, as a reader, I resonate with your annoyance in this conversation.
For me, I agree with many of Alex’s denotational claims, but feel like he’s also slipping in a bunch of connotation that I think is mostly wrong, but because he’s agreeing with the denotation for any particular point you bring up, it feels slippery, or like I’m having one pulled over on me.
It has a motte-and-bailey feel to it. Like Alex will tell me that “oh of course Heaven and Hell are not literal places under the earth and in the sky, that’s obviously dumb.” But, when he goes to talk with religious people, who might think that, or something not quite as wrong as that, but still something I think is pretty wrong, he’ll talk about heaven and hell, without clarifying what hem means, and it will seem like they’re agreeing, but the communitive property of agreement between you and Alex and Alex and the religious person doesn’t actually hold.
Like, it reads to me like Alex keeps trying to say “you and I Ben, we basically agree”, and as an onlooker, I don’t think you actually agree, on a bunch of important but so-far-inexplicit points.
[Ironically, if Alex does succeed in his quest of getting formal descriptions of all this religious stuff, that might solve this problem. Or at least solve it with religious people who also happen to be mathematicians.]
I don’t know if that description matches your experience, this is just my take as an onlooker.