Parse a sentence for me, please

[Ari Rahikkala]

< ari> Why do computer scientists have such a low opinion of philosophers?
<@spb> depends which sort of computer scientist and which sort of philosopher
< ari> The kind of computer scientist that tends to have a low opinion of the kind of philosopher that the kind of computer scientist that tends to have a low opinion of this kind of philosopher tends to have a low opinion of.

I kind of got carried away writing this sentence... until, about 3/4 way through, I suddenly realised I wasn't sure what semantic level I was on. Then I spent a couple of minutes trying to figure that out, gave up, and just finished the sentence in a way that seemed syntactically correct and sounded right. I know little about natural language analysis, could someone find a more understandable representation for this sentence or its meaning?

FWIW, I'm not quite sure what it actually means. I suspect, however, that if you were to actually try to evaluate the set of philosophers and computer scientists defined here the computation would diverge... unless you give it a seed value: If you start with a set of computer scientists containing Asher and an empty set of philosophers, recursively add philosophers disliked by any of the computer scientists in our set and computer scientists that dislike any of the philosophers in our set, you can reach a defined fixed point. Chances are that this point will contain a lot of computer scientists.

[Lorizael]

Those computer scientists who tend to have a low opinion of philosophers, and the philosophers those computer scientists tend to have a low opinion of.

This sentence lacks the precision yours has in only one way, but spoken aloud no one would know or care. And it's not quite as obtuse as yours, but it does retain your tautological meaninglessness.

[Ari Rahikkala]

/me nods

You're right, that makes it significantly clearer... and much more obvious that it's undefined.

[Cort Haus]

I hereby sentence you 5 years in the 'poly chat room.

There, I've passed a sentence.

[Japher]

that's pretty harsh

[Asher]

The answer to the question is simple: the reason computer scientists have such a low opinion of filosofizers is computer science is binary (1/0, right/wrong) and filosofy is all about shades of gray. Computer Scientists are always right, filosofizers are never right.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Asher
computer science is binary (1/0, right/wrong)

damn, that would explain why MS word f**ked up the graph embedded in the doc my colleague sent me, and even PChelp couldnt figure it out, so I have to recreate the graph.

[Asher]

User error, I'm sure.

[Japher]

The answer to the question is simpler: the reason computer scientists have such a low opinion of filsophizeriansist is because they have a low opinion of everyone. This is due to their insecurity with themselves, inparticullarly with the burning question that haunts every computer scientist, "if I'm gay, why am I secretly attracted to my mother?"

[Asher]

Originally posted by Japher
The answer to the question is simpler: the reason computer scientists have such a low opinion of filsophizeriansist is because they have a low opinion of everyone. This is due to their insecurity with themselves, inparticullarly with the burning question that haunts every computer scientist, "if I'm gay, why am I secretly attracted to my mother?"

You are usually pretty funny for a FEM ENGG. LOL.

(but not this time)

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Asher
User error, I'm sure.

maybe, but my colleague is pretty smart. And yet it was messed up when he sent it to me. And the PC help contractors couldnt figure out how to fix it.

Maybe its cause MS office is a program that requires technical knowledge to run, and shouldnt be in the hands of economists.

Or maybe its cause compsci is about 0/1 binary things, the question of what that graph should look like was NOT a 0/1 binary - MS Word was trying to address something as complex, and ambiguous, as Flossophy.

Que Asher and Kuci splaining how it all resolves itself into 0s and 1s yeah I know. Que Aggie splaining how Flossophy resolves into truth statements, and stuff.


HAve fun guys.

[Asher]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


maybe, but my colleague is pretty smart. And yet it was messed up when he sent it to me. And the PC help contractors couldnt figure out how to fix it.

Maybe its cause MS office is a program that requires technical knowledge to run, and shouldnt be in the hands of economists.

Or maybe its cause compsci is about 0/1 binary things, the question of what that graph should look like was NOT a 0/1 binary - MS Word was trying to address something as complex, and ambiguous, as Flossophy.

Que Asher and Kuci splaining how it all resolves itself into 0s and 1s yeah I know. Que Aggie splaining how Flossophy resolves into truth statements, and stuff.


HAve fun guys.

If the image was actually inserted as a binary object, there'd be no problem. Clearly, it was not.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Lorizael
Those computer scientists who tend to have a low opinion of philosophers, and the philosophers those computer scientists tend to have a low opinion of.

This sentence lacks the precision yours has in only one way, but spoken aloud no one would know or care.

It also lacks a main verb.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
It also lacks a main verb.

I know that, but so does his. Yeah, it's not technically a sentence. But this is internet chatting here. Whatever gets the point across is right.

[Ari Rahikkala]

FWIW, my opinion is that computer scientists find their field to be a much better way to attain understanding of abstraction and rigor of thought than philosophy, and resent philosophers for disagreeing.