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> “That’s a very natural restriction for a model of reality,” said Wojciech Czerwiński, a computer scientist at the University of Warsaw. “You cannot have a neg
by dclowd9901 3y ago
> “That’s a very natural restriction for a model of reality,” said Wojciech Czerwiński, a computer scientist at the University of Warsaw. “You cannot have a negative number of apples.”
I realize this is probably outside the interest bounds of the problem space, but I could indeed have negative apples if I owe someone apples I don’t have.
- dragonwriter 3y agoNo, then you would have however many apples you actually have, as well as an obligation to provide someone more apples than you have. Having an obligation to provide a thing is not actually the same thing as having negative one of the thing, even though it may occasionally be useful for some purposes to treat them as the same thing. (This is somewhat less true with money and things that work like it, since those things are essentially themselves already a social exoectation of future goods and services from other people, so the difference between an obligation of money and actual money is somewhat less than with other things.)