[r-t] What's the meaning of a method having a particular false course head

Don Morrison dfm at mv.com
Wed Apr 20 20:01:27 UTC 2005


The recent correspondence about methods with particularly heinous 
falseness has often used A falseness as something present in every 
method. Which raises a question:

What, precisely, do we mean when we say a method has a particular 
falseness? Does it mean that there are two different rows in the 
course, so related? Or that there are two rows, possibly the same, so 
related? Or something else entirely?

In the first case, above, A falseness would only be present if a method 
were false in its plain course.

In the second case, which I believe Richard has used in his examples, 
every method must contain A falseness. Or at least, every method with 
at least one row in its plain course :-)

Or is there a third possibility?

It would seem that having a definition where every method must contain 
A falseness means it doesn't add any information, whereas having it 
mean the method is false in the plain course does add information, and 
may be a preferable convention.

Is either interpretation widely used to the exclusion of the other?


-- 
Don Morrison <dfm at mv.com>
"We are well aware from the history of science that ideas
universally believed are not necessarily true."
                     -- Jane Jacobs, _The Economy of Cities_





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