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Well, you say multiple times that you don't think that the disconnect is stupidity or ignorance, but then you talk about how the people who have given the wrong

Well, you say multiple times that you don't think that the disconnect is stupidity or ignorance, but then you talk about how the people who have given the wrong answer are not following logic, are misinformed, uncaring or wanting only to be entertained (which sound mainly like other ways of saying stupidity and ignorance). I think it's great that you're trying to analyse why people are giving such an answer, and you may be largely right in what you've come up with, but I think a more charitable explanation that you don't seem to have considered at all is that their answer makes logical sense in their framework, and that the educational mission you are on should be considering frameworks rather than rightness and wrongness and 'educating' them out of their current view.

ColinWright 6y ago
Thank you for your insights ... I will revisit the post to try to remove my mis-expressions that have led you to draw conclusions I did not intend. To help me, when you say: > I think a more charitable explanation that you don't seem to have considered at all is that their answer makes logical sense in their framework ... I can't find a framework in which it makes any logical sense. Can you suggest one?
- kybernetikos 6y ago
  > I can't find a framework in which it makes any logical sense. Can you suggest one? There have been three suggested already 1. the ancient greek view (in which one was not fully even or odd). 2. the view where the definition of even requires having 2 as a factor. This is not as good a definition of 'even' as having no remainder when divided by two for all the reasons the wikipedia article will tell you, but it's logical and consistent, and quite probably tracks with common (non-mathematical) usage best. 3. The other view is about how we use the concept of evenness in normal language. In normal language, and for good reason, 0 is a special case. I don't tell people that a Zoo has an even number of unicorns. If I'm talking about sharing cookies between my two children, I might say that 2 cookies are even, or that 4 cookies are even, I will not say that an empty cookie jar has an even number of cookies in it. There may be others, I'd be the wrong person to ask, since I consider 0 to be even. But the reason the article came across as elitist to me is because while repeatedly stressing that you believed in taking a charitable interpretation of the responses and the reasons for them, your starting point seemed to be the wrongness of the wrong answers, and your charitableness seemed limited to trying to find reasons for why those people were so wrong. An actually charitable treatment that followed your described principles might be very interesting.

ColinWright 6y ago

Thank you for your insights ... I will revisit the post to try to remove my mis-expressions that have led you to draw conclusions I did not intend. To help me, when you say: > I think a more charitable explanation that you don't seem to have considered at all is that their answer makes logical sense in their framework ... I can't find a framework in which it makes any logical sense. Can you suggest one?

kybernetikos 6y ago
> I can't find a framework in which it makes any logical sense. Can you suggest one? There have been three suggested already 1. the ancient greek view (in which one was not fully even or odd). 2. the view where the definition of even requires having 2 as a factor. This is not as good a definition of 'even' as having no remainder when divided by two for all the reasons the wikipedia article will tell you, but it's logical and consistent, and quite probably tracks with common (non-mathematical) usage best. 3. The other view is about how we use the concept of evenness in normal language. In normal language, and for good reason, 0 is a special case. I don't tell people that a Zoo has an even number of unicorns. If I'm talking about sharing cookies between my two children, I might say that 2 cookies are even, or that 4 cookies are even, I will not say that an empty cookie jar has an even number of cookies in it. There may be others, I'd be the wrong person to ask, since I consider 0 to be even. But the reason the article came across as elitist to me is because while repeatedly stressing that you believed in taking a charitable interpretation of the responses and the reasons for them, your starting point seemed to be the wrongness of the wrong answers, and your charitableness seemed limited to trying to find reasons for why those people were so wrong. An actually charitable treatment that followed your described principles might be very interesting.