Not saying this just because I disagree with Flon’s Law, but I found the use of Flon’s Law to argue against Modest Epistemology as very distracting in the article, partly because the argument that all programming languages are inherently equally easy to mess up in seems like a very typical example of Modest Epistemology. (We imagine there are people with beliefs X1, X2, X3..., Xn, each of the form “I believe Pi is the best language”. Throwing out all the specifics, we must accept that they’re all equally negligibly correct.)
Probability theory and decision theory shouldn’t deliver clearly wrong answers. [...] But if we’re just dealing with verbal injunctions for humans, where there are degrees of freedom, then there is nothing we can say that a hypothetical crackpot could not somehow misuse.
It’s funny that Flon’s Law is used to support the bit leading up to this, because it’s almost exactly what I’d say to argue against Flon’s Law: Some programming languages encourage the writer by default to structure their ideas in ways that certain properties can be automatically enforced or checked in a mathematical way from the structure, and dynamic untyped languages are instead more like arbitrary verbal reasoning that isn’t rigorous enough for any properties to be proven from the structure itself. Sure, it’s technically possible to make nonsense in any programming language, but you have to try harder in some, in the same way you have to try harder to make diagonals with legos than plain blocks, or be a little clever to make a false math proof that looks right on the surface while in verbal reasoning you can say something that sounds right but is wrong just by using a word twice while relying on different meanings in each use.
I get the logic the article is going for in using Flon’s Law—that it’s trying to make a parallel between fancy programming languages and flavors of verbal reasoning (Modest Epistemology) that claim to be able to solve problems from their structure without engaging with the content—but then the article goes on to talk about the specifics of math are actually better than verbal reasoning like Modest Epistemology, and it’s extremely confusing to read as someone that perceives the correct groupings as {math, fancy programming languages with provable properties} and {verbal reasoning, dynamic untyped programming languages}, which is the very division that Flon’s Law argues against being useful.
(Huh, this really wasn’t intended to be my thesis on Flon’s Law, but I guess it is now. I just meant to nitpick the choice of metaphor and argue that Flon’s Law is at the very least an ambiguously bad example to use.)
Not saying this just because I disagree with Flon’s Law, but I found the use of Flon’s Law to argue against Modest Epistemology as very distracting in the article, partly because the argument that all programming languages are inherently equally easy to mess up in seems like a very typical example of Modest Epistemology. (We imagine there are people with beliefs X1, X2, X3..., Xn, each of the form “I believe Pi is the best language”. Throwing out all the specifics, we must accept that they’re all equally negligibly correct.)
It’s funny that Flon’s Law is used to support the bit leading up to this, because it’s almost exactly what I’d say to argue against Flon’s Law: Some programming languages encourage the writer by default to structure their ideas in ways that certain properties can be automatically enforced or checked in a mathematical way from the structure, and dynamic untyped languages are instead more like arbitrary verbal reasoning that isn’t rigorous enough for any properties to be proven from the structure itself. Sure, it’s technically possible to make nonsense in any programming language, but you have to try harder in some, in the same way you have to try harder to make diagonals with legos than plain blocks, or be a little clever to make a false math proof that looks right on the surface while in verbal reasoning you can say something that sounds right but is wrong just by using a word twice while relying on different meanings in each use.
I get the logic the article is going for in using Flon’s Law—that it’s trying to make a parallel between fancy programming languages and flavors of verbal reasoning (Modest Epistemology) that claim to be able to solve problems from their structure without engaging with the content—but then the article goes on to talk about the specifics of math are actually better than verbal reasoning like Modest Epistemology, and it’s extremely confusing to read as someone that perceives the correct groupings as {math, fancy programming languages with provable properties} and {verbal reasoning, dynamic untyped programming languages}, which is the very division that Flon’s Law argues against being useful.
(Huh, this really wasn’t intended to be my thesis on Flon’s Law, but I guess it is now. I just meant to nitpick the choice of metaphor and argue that Flon’s Law is at the very least an ambiguously bad example to use.)