On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 3:14 PM, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
inherently ambiguous in English?
After all, if evil is a negative thing, then wouldn't "the lesser of two negatives" would be the worser thing ?
I don't think it's ambiguous. I think you're confusing "negative" in the sense of "measured by negative numbers" with "negative" in the sense of "bad, or having bad consequences". If A is a very evil thing, and B is a somewhat less evil thing, we might have E(A) = 100 and E(B) = 80, and B is the lesser evil. The fact that E(X) = -G(X) doesn't change that. The statement is about E(X), not G(X) (where G is the "goodness function"). No-one would ever say "A is less evil than B" to mean that A was really horrendous and B was mildly bad.l Andy
Perhaps teaching coding in public schools might be a positive thing after all...
Jus' sayin'...
(Or perhaps people misheard the advice as "the lessOr of two evils" ???)
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