Poemranker [Replying] Fri May 10 00:27:48 PDT 2024

Replying to a comment on:

Slowly he turned, He walked a few paces back to the tree, and lay down in its shade. His mind a blank, Knew all he had was lost. He was satisfied enough to let the ground engulf him, Swallow him to the eternal blackness. The branches hung limply over him, And wept their tears of blood.

-=Dark_Angel=-, P.I.

9-Sep-04/10:43 AM

I know what you're saying, but I'm not sure I agree. The argument boils down to the question of whether or not these two sentences are equivalent:

A. "It is possible that X is possible."
B. "X is possible."

Clearly B implies A - if B is true, then A must also be true. I also think A implies B, but you don't. My reasoning is that when you say something is possible, all you're saying is that you don't KNOW that it is false. If you say "It's possible that X is possible" then clearly you don't know that X is false, so you must think X is possible.

I have been thinking about this problem for some time, and that is the only sensible interpretation I can come up with. The terrible thing is that underneath all this fiddle-faddle is the royally obvious fact that all Dovina was trying to say was "A more descriptive title might have eased my misunderstanding." Perhaps if she had had the common decency to say that in the first place, we all could have avoided a lot of silly bother. Nevertheless, I would be interested to see what people think about this problem, viz. the equivalence of A and B.

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