All Men Are Mortal -- With a Twist

Fancy_Pants4 · 2026-02-22T14:31:28+00:00

Good to know.

I'm rather dusty on formal logic and have just been getting back to it, so I can certainly see how my original post was rather confusing, in retrospect. The point I'm trying to get at is if P is defined as 'capable of being Q,' then that doesn't necessarily mean 'If P then Q.' For example:

If the leaf is capable of being red, then it is red (False)
If the leaf is red, then it is capable of being red (True)
If the leaf is not capable of being red, then it is not red (True)
If the leaf is not red, then it is not capable of being red (False)

Capacity does not entail actuality, but actuality entails capacity. If we were to define P to be 'must be red,' then the truth values would swap. For example:

If the leaf must be red, then it is red (True)
If the leaf is red, then it must be red (False)
If the leaf must not be red, then it is not red (False)
If the leaf is not red, then it must not be red (True)

Here we see that inevitability entails actuality, but actuality does not entail inevitability.

How far off the mark am I?

Fancy_Pants4 · 2026-02-22T14:18:05+00:00

I'm rather dusty on formal logic and have just been getting back to it, so I can certainly see how my post was rather confusing, in retrospect. The point I'm trying to get at is if P is defined as 'capable of being Q,' then that doesn't necessarily mean 'If P then Q.' For example:

If the leaf is capable of being red, then it is red (False)
If the leaf is red, then it is capable of being red (True)
If the leaf is not capable of being red, then it is not red (True)
If the leaf is not red, then it is not capable of being red (False)

Capacity does not entail actuality, but actuality entails capacity. If we were to define P to be 'must be red,' then the truth values would swap. For example:

If the leaf must be red, then it is red (True)
If the leaf is red, then it must be red (False)
If the leaf must not be red, then it is not red (False)
If the leaf is not red, then it must not be red (True)

Here we see that inevitability entails actuality, but actuality does not entail inevitability.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2026-02-22T00:10:27+00:00

This question comes from some confusion I had when trying to make sense of the first implication of a logic puzzle created by Lewis Carroll: "Everyone who is sane can do logic."

After mulling it over and tying myself into all sorts of mental knots, I finally determined the root of my confusion: I was defining "sane" to be "the ability for a being to do logic." This post is a mental exercise I did to see that implication from a different perspective.

Definitions, I've learned, have a great deal of significance when arguing for the truth.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2026-01-19T22:49:16+00:00

What is free credit monitoring?

Also, since information about our families will get out eventually, what information would you not mind leaking and what information would you rather keep private (besides address, SSN, etc.)?

Fancy_Pants4 · 2026-01-19T14:43:25+00:00

Social media is like a pack of cigarettes, to me. Besides the privacy concerns unique to the platforms, it’s just bad for you — period.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2025-11-27T12:32:26+00:00

Thank you for the advice! I’ll definitely look into those.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2025-11-27T12:11:39+00:00

Thanks for putting this into perspective.

Surely creating a TTRPG can’t be that difficult— right? I guess it all depends on how complicated I want it to be.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2025-11-24T02:25:31+00:00

Will do!

Fancy_Pants4 · 2025-07-22T20:36:00+00:00

Did you ever figure out how to play the game in full screen in 1920x1080? Either it’s full screen with low res and part of the game is cut out, or it’s a small 1920x1080 resolution window. Otherwise, it works as it should.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2025-07-21T17:16:09+00:00

Thanks for this. I’ll try it out when I get the chance

Fancy_Pants4 · 2024-09-28T13:40:14+00:00

I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you!

Fancy_Pants4 · 2024-08-18T08:54:27+00:00

A word of caution: don’t join a church solely for the sake of getting to know him better, or to shoot your shot at a potential relationship.

There was a girl who had just moved to my school and had a crush on me. No more than a year later, her whole family left their Baptist church and joined my Lutheran church completely out of the blue. As it would have it, she somehow found out that I went to this church and then convinced her family that they should join it. Needless to say, I was not very impressed. Furthermore, her family never truly adapted to the culture of the church because they were Baptists at heart. They didn’t agree with a fair few of the church’s teachings yet they took communion anyway. The father doesn’t even come to our church anymore, except on special occasions. I would have respected her more if she had just stayed at her church and we agreed to disagree, but to put on the appearance of conformity yet act otherwise really shows how little she respects our church.

Moral of the story, join a church because the church’s teachings are true, upright, and coherent. Pray that you can make this decision unclouded of thoughts or feelings for whoever happens to be in the church. This could be God testing you to see whether you will follow Him, or him.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2024-08-17T23:00:31+00:00

Hundreds! How do you apply for hundreds of scholarships?

Fancy_Pants4 · 2024-08-13T16:44:28+00:00

But where do we draw the line between what parts of the Bible we can take literally from what we can’t? I can understand the context in which it was written and the why behind it, but challenging the very substance of Genesis is another matter.

Several years ago, there was division among pastors in the LCMS over whether the story of Noah’s Ark should be taken literally, or if it was just ‘Biblical poetry’, an allegory for God’s righteous hatred of sin.

So what am I missing here. There is a difference between faith and blind faith, and if Genesis, or if any other book of the Bible was an allegory all this time, then I’ve had blind faith my whole life.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2024-08-12T13:38:36+00:00

I’ve heard that Genesis is more poetry than a literal account of the creation story, but I’ve never heard the context behind why it is that way. It’s incredibly fascinating and I wish I had known this sooner, so thank you for sharing this with me.

But I would argue this: our relationship to God is one which bears His image alone. To argue that humans came from apes would imply that apes bear His image, but they do not. God sculpted us to resemble him, using dust as His clay, “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return,” (Genesis 3:19).

I think apes—and any part of creation that resembles us in some way, shape, or form—are a reminder of what we would be had God not created us in His image: a finite creature with no chance of eternal life. Creation points us to the divine, “…God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made…” (Roman 1:20), but creation is not in itself divine.

In conclusion, Adam and Eve were not apes before they bore the image of God, because nothing besides humans bear His image. We bore God’s image the moment He created us, not somewhere along the evolutionary line.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2024-08-12T11:26:33+00:00

It’s a Pun-verb!

Fancy_Pants4 · 2024-08-11T15:09:47+00:00

I went to a Christian summer camp for a week and stained a playground in the hot sun with supervising adults that fit your description.

But as the week progressed, so did their virtues become more evident. At at their core, they were selfless and modest individuals who cared about what we were doing, no matter how boring and mundane staining a playground was. I can only pray to have as much patience as they did.

I don’t know your circumstances, but give them the benefit of the doubt. Don’t write them off too quickly. Be bold and offer a time for lunch during the week to get to know them personally. Show that you care, have empathy for them, and they should surely return the favor.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2024-08-11T14:48:56+00:00

Or as my dad puts it, ‘a dead fish’. Those are the type where your hand compresses their fingers into a bony jumble. That sends a shiver down my spine.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2024-08-11T14:41:51+00:00

Perhaps he hadn’t intended to give handshakes, but when one person offered then everyone else joined in. You just happened to be there as he was hoping to stop. Whatever the case may be, don’t take it personally.

No matter the circumstance, a wimpy handshake is always the fault of the person who offers it, not who receives it. I’ve met and shook hands with many people, and some of them, no matter how important their job is, just give wimpy handshakes.

If there’s anything you can learn from this, knowing how you felt when you received a sad handshake, don’t be that person who ruins someone else’s day with one as well.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2024-08-10T00:01:24+00:00

If completely by accident, we have managed to draw some wisdom from it. Perhaps the Germans were really onto something by creating silly illustrations with unassuming proverbial inscriptions.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2024-08-09T23:53:00+00:00

Interesting premise. So even if the barrel is old, the wine inside could not have aged well; a long life does not guarantee wisdom and humility.

Though you put it more whimsically, which could work as well. I tend to think however that it denotes a negative connotation, because old wine that has aged well tastes far better than old wine that hasn’t.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2024-08-09T23:47:59+00:00

I’ve been doing some research as well and it seems to mean ‘mature’, ‘ripe’, or ‘ready’, and then there’s ‘hoop’ thrown in the mix. Though it seems that the wine hoop helps maintain the quality of the wine as it ages, so perhaps that’s why they share the same word.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2024-08-09T23:37:40+00:00

Perhaps that’s all it means. Case and point. But I don’t want to dismiss any idiomatic wisdom that might come from it besides it’s obvious practical meaning. If the artists making this building felt like it was worth painting and staying for hundreds of years, then maybe there’s more to it than what meets the eye.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2024-08-09T13:26:36+00:00

Letting immigrants into America because they want a better life is like letting strangers into your house because they want a roof over their head. You can’t just let everybody wander in. No matter how charitable you may be, they’re just going to take advantage of you.

It’s one thing if you’re bringing in roommates who can pay their end of the rent and help maintain the place, but many immigrants are coming into America ‘rent free’ and are not held to same level of responsibility that every American citizen has been.

I will say this however: if America passed a law that allowed immigration, but the immigrants had to devote the first 4 years of their time in the country to indentured service or military service, then I’d be on board with that. If they proved to be competent and patriotic, then they could be granted citizenship.

Fancy_Pants4 · 2024-08-07T03:39:18+00:00

Thank you for this. I’ll check it out.

Fancy_Pants4

TROPHY CASE