Wiseguy's Comments
I'm very glad I got 100%. I would've been embarrassed if I had scored any lower, being a Computer Scientist and avid logician.
I think the water question may have been a suboptimal example of proving a negative versus proving a positive.
Let's say we know that aliens exist. I claim that all aliens are green. To conclusively prove that all aliens are green, I would have to gather every single alien in the universe and show that each is green. That's really hard. How do I KNOW for sure that I have found every single alien? It's really hard to prove a positive.
On the other hand, I claim that not every alien is green. To prove that, I would only need to find one alien that isn't green. It's much easier to prove a negative.
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So maybe this is what they were getting at with the water question. To prove that all water molecules have one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, you would have to example every individual water molecule in existence -- "a lot" or "all but one" does not count as "ALL."
I think the water question may have been a suboptimal example of proving a negative versus proving a positive.
Let's say we know that aliens exist. I claim that all aliens are green. To conclusively prove that all aliens are green, I would have to gather every single alien in the universe and show that each is green. That's really hard. How do I KNOW for sure that I have found every single alien? It's really hard to prove a positive.
On the other hand, I claim that not every alien is green. To prove that, I would only need to find one alien that isn't green. It's much easier to prove a negative.
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So maybe this is what they were getting at with the water question. To prove that all water molecules have one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, you would have to example every individual water molecule in existence -- "a lot" or "all but one" does not count as "ALL."
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