From: Jeff Bone (jbone@jump.net)
Date: Thu Aug 17 2000 - 02:09:03 PDT
Let me just go on record as acknowledging that, as arguments go, the proposition "there's nothing in life
that money can't buy" and the corollary metaproposition "you can't prove otherwise without personal
counterexample" is about as worthwhile an argument as claiming "the universe was created in toto in 1933 by
a being called Fred" and observing that you really can't prove otherwise unless you yourself created the
universe. While literally true, it only points out (and perhaps forces one to acknowledge and confront)
the limits of human experience and understanding rather than commenting on the specifics of the issue in
question.
The problem with the whole of philosophy, with arguments of any qualitative or existential nature, is that
the whole field has gone straight to the crapper since we realized some time ago that we can't even prove
that we ourselves exist. Even the venerable "cogito ergo sum" is so full of holes you could drive a truck
through it.
That having been observed, I'm going to say good night and head back to the practical, useful, magnificent,
and arguable world of transfinite numbers where the arguments are nice and tidy and logical, and the
language relatively unambiguous. :-)
jb
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