Re: VMs: Time to get hands dirty

[Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

2/22/03 12:27:52 PM, Big Jim <bigjim@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


>Rule of thumb: You can NOT prove something is "wrong" unless you know what 
>is "right." 

I do not know what _pi_ is beyond the 8th decimal. I am incapable
of proving that it is an irrational number. Not only that, but
I am incapable of _calculating_ pi. That it is 3.14159265... is
to me a matter of faith rather than reason. However, I am able
to prove that pi = 4 is wrong. I take a bottle of Talisker,
I measure its diameter at the base, I measure its circumference.

Language now. The word for "fish" is Lehali is /E/ (E as e in 
"bet"). It can be regularly derived from the word you find
in Malay, in Timorese, in many more languages of the Pacific:
/ikan/. However, it could equally well be derived from
ikap, ikar, ikas, ikat, ikay, ikab, ikad... iken, ikep, iker...
ikon, ikep, ikor... eken, ekep, eker... ekon, ekop, ekor...
I'll spare you the rest. Therefore it is impossible to know
whether Lehali /E/ is derived from /ikan/ or something else.
But it is easy to demonstrate that it cannot be derived
from /manuk/. So you can prove that /E/ < /manuk/ is WRONG,
even though you cannot tell which of the hundreds of possible
derivations is RIGHT.

>If you don't know what is right, it is ALL speculation.

If you don't know what is right, there still is something
left.



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