3 ms·

> Everybody is aware of this at some level, but somehow this knowledge seems to suddenly disappear in a discussion about text, so let's get it out first: A comp

by jibal 1y ago

> Everybody is aware of this at some level, but somehow this knowledge seems to suddenly disappear in a discussion about text, so let's get it out first: A computer cannot store "letters", "numbers", "pictures" or anything else. The only thing it can store and work with are bits. This is wrong and it goes downhill from there. I don't want to take the time and effort to fisk it, but it's full of errors like mistaking characters for codepoints and saying things like "In other words, ASCII maps 1:1 unto UTF-8" -- a bizarre and wrong way to say what he said in the previous sentence: "All characters available in the ASCII encoding only take up a single byte in UTF-8 and they're the exact same bytes as are used in ASCII".

torstenvl 1y ago
It isn't wrong. Computers, broadly speaking, can only store binary digits. I'm not sure if you're thinking of the Mark II, or the term as meaning human arithmeticians, or what, but that seems pedantic to the point of sophistry.
- jibal 1y ago
  I've pointed out your mistakes elsewhere and won't respond to you otherwise. I just want to alert you to the fact that, when you told someone several weeks ago that "Your behavior has no place here" you were addressing an HN public moderator.
jibal 1y ago
"pedantic to the point of sophistry" Gotta love how those who can't comprehend reach for the ad hominem. And it's so absurdly hypocritical ... the claim that "A computer cannot store "letters", "numbers", "pictures" or anything else. The only thing it can store and work with are bits" is extraordinarily pedantic sophistry and WRONG. It comes from people who have no understanding of the concepts of a representation and abstraction and either don't know how digital storage works or are pretending not to. The many bi-state mechanisms we use for digital storage are not bits, they represent bits. And CPUs don't contain (or "store") bits, they are made of transistors that control the flow of electrons ... modeling this as "bits" is an abstraction. But hey, I guess John von Neumann was a pedant and a sophist when he talked about stored program computers rather than stored bit computers.
- torstenvl 1y ago
  An ad hominem is a fallacious argument pertaining to one or more individual characteristics of one or more persons. Criticism of an argument as pedantic and/or sophistry cannot possibly be an ad hominem, because it is a criticism of the argument itself. By contrast, your attempt to discredit me by reference to some other interaction we seem to have had is an ad hominem. More interestingly, your reference to John von Neumann and your reference to a moderator are both also a subclass of ad hominems known as "appeals to authority." https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-ad-hominem-fallacy/ https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-ad-hominem-fallacy/

by jibal 1y ago

torstenvl 1y ago

It isn't wrong. Computers, broadly speaking, can only store binary digits. I'm not sure if you're thinking of the Mark II, or the term as meaning human arithmeticians, or what, but that seems pedantic to the point of sophistry.

jibal 1y ago
I've pointed out your mistakes elsewhere and won't respond to you otherwise. I just want to alert you to the fact that, when you told someone several weeks ago that "Your behavior has no place here" you were addressing an HN public moderator.

jibal 1y ago

"pedantic to the point of sophistry" Gotta love how those who can't comprehend reach for the ad hominem. And it's so absurdly hypocritical ... the claim that "A computer cannot store "letters", "numbers", "pictures" or anything else. The only thing it can store and work with are bits" is extraordinarily pedantic sophistry and WRONG. It comes from people who have no understanding of the concepts of a representation and abstraction and either don't know how digital storage works or are pretending not to. The many bi-state mechanisms we use for digital storage are not bits, they represent bits. And CPUs don't contain (or "store") bits, they are made of transistors that control the flow of electrons ... modeling this as "bits" is an abstraction. But hey, I guess John von Neumann was a pedant and a sophist when he talked about stored program computers rather than stored bit computers.

torstenvl 1y ago
An ad hominem is a fallacious argument pertaining to one or more individual characteristics of one or more persons. Criticism of an argument as pedantic and/or sophistry cannot possibly be an ad hominem, because it is a criticism of the argument itself. By contrast, your attempt to discredit me by reference to some other interaction we seem to have had is an ad hominem. More interestingly, your reference to John von Neumann and your reference to a moderator are both also a subclass of ad hominems known as "appeals to authority." https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-ad-hominem-fallacy/ https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-ad-hominem-fallacy/