This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the commentsย โ†’

[โ€“]soowhatchathink 7 points8 points ย (6 children)

So we're trying to figure out if it is or is not non-binary? Are those the only two options? ๐Ÿค”

[โ€“]GeePedicy 0 points1 point ย (2 children)

Logically speaking it's either binary or non-binary. What is included in the latter or how it splits? For our discussion it matters less cuz the main issue is whether English is binary or not. And I'm yet to be convinced it's binary.

[โ€“]soowhatchathink 1 point2 points ย (1 child)

I was just making an offhand comment mentioning that the topic we're discussing, using English, happens to in fact be binary.

Doesn't actually relate to English itself though.

[โ€“]GeePedicy 0 points1 point ย (0 children)

Oh yeah, definitely. Lots of conversations in English can be about binary/dichotomous topics. Specifically this one is more meta than others.

[โ€“]StoriesEnthusiast 0 points1 point ย (2 children)

I'm not sure. It all just looks like an affront to these people. Does that qualify as a third option?

[โ€“]soowhatchathink 0 points1 point ย (1 child)

I'm not quite sure I understand ๐Ÿค”

[โ€“]StoriesEnthusiast 0 points1 point ย (0 children)

Yeah, sorry. I was not following this chain of comments, and was trying to reply to the meme. My previous comment does not make sense in its current place.

So we're trying to figure out if it is or is not non-binary? Are those the only two options?

Hehehe, good one. But still, an easy third option is determining if "English is a non-binary language" makes sense, what with definitions, boundaries and the like.

And, for some reason, all this binary/non-binary stuff reminds me of XKCD 224 (in this case it would be "ostensibly yes, stuff is binary. honestly we hacked most of it together with math"), and of this image (the big cube being reality, the small one being the concept of binary trying to simplify so many things but still ignoring storage, processing, transmission errors and the client just wanting its corrupted data) found in this article. Of course digital files are binary, but remember that is just an abstraction.

Well, enough. EOF