If you can say enough things about a thing does that mean that you know what the thing is?

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• bostonbananarama@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

  If you make a question ambiguous enough, can it have an answer?

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  • hashferret@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

    42

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  • dope@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

    Actually, if the bar on your satisfaction is low enough, you can literally answer any question.

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• TheBananaKing@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

  If you can post enough vaguely-phrased questions with no context, is that philosophy?

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  • dope@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

    Oh whine me a sad song why don’t you? My question is clear enough for anybody who can answer it.

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• Deestan@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

  Strictly no. But the overlap is significant.

  Being able to say things about a thing can be accomplished by memorizing trivia.

  Knowing what the thing is implies understanding. This does not automatically follow from knowing trivia.

  Though people tend to build an understanding while amassing trivia, so it’s considered a good enough approximation for schools. Hence multiple choice tests. Personally, I think it is lazy and incentivizes wrong ways to teach and bad ways to study.

  Also also, this is why the prevalence of internet access and now ChatGPT is so scary for schools: Students can easily provide this appoximated understanding without having any.

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  • dope@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

    What’s the difference between knowing what a thing is and knowing a bunch of things about a thing?

    Is it backstory? Is that the key thing to know?

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• Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

  It’s relative. If I ask you about a trash can, you can say it’s a can for trash and yeah, you know what it is. But if we’re talking about a person, you can rattle off an entire Wikipedia article of facts about Taylor Swift but you don’t know her.

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  • dope@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

    Offhand I can’t think of any knowledge about the real world that doesn’t amount to “a bunch of facts”. A big predictive model basically.

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• theKalash@feddit.ch ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

  It depends on things.

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  • dope@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

    What’s the difference?

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• watson387@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

  lolwut

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