Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Since when does the truth need context? If I tweet "males are not females" on Twitter with no context, they will ban my account.

Also, if I want to say "the gender you have now should match the gender you were assigned at birth, or your gender identity is illegitimate", that's precisely what I'll say, but I tend to speak directly. Have you considered you might be projecting if you can read the literal words "males are not females" and conclude a person intends to say, "the gender you have now should match the gender you were assigned at birth, or your gender identity is illegitimate"? That seems like quite a leap.




I'd say the truth value of any possible statement is entirely derived from context. Any possible statement could appear on a sign from nowhere in an infinite empty universe purely out of quantum fluctuations, but it would have no meaning without the context of a universe like ours. Every statement has a context in which it expresses the truth, and many others in which it is false. And people get into conflicts about the meta-issue of whose context is right.

Mach's principle is kind of an analogy I'm thinking of.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: