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Removing "not" and reducing other negatives

Using "NOT" is like slathering a bucket of NOT paint on the real world. Humans made up NOT for maybe its usefulness, and it kinda went everywhere we went. You can chip away at that paint wherever you are, in order to see the world a bit more clearly. Here are two examples of common NOT expressions that place a thick coat on the real world. They are each followed by possible descriptions with more detail.

I don't know -- I'd like to know
I can't -- I'd like to learn
I don't care -- I'm interested in knowing why someone would care

Notice that the re-phrasings inspire a bit of thinking about what I want. I re-form a phrase that describes cutting off or cutting out something from this world, and imagine a thing that I'd like to bring about.

I don't think [use link] is covered elsewhere in this blog.

Direct re-phrasings of the word "not":

different from
other than
free of
have yet to

The first three suggest the AND world [use link] to me. "Have yet to" is much like rephrasing "I don't know" and "I can't" to describe wishes.

I'm still thinking about how to peel the paint from these common sentence parts.

not too
not that bad, not that much, not that many
not very

The following family of "Don't" should be pretty easy, in the sense that most of these verbs have well-known opposites. Say the opposites out loud yourself. However, once you think of the opposite, you can see that maybe that was not the point. See the first example with suggestions for its opposites, and then suggestions for what is really being suggested.

It doesn't matter.
Don't go there. (Step 1: Go here? Stay here? Stop at this point? Step 2: Let's talk about something else. Let's talk about things that are more comforting to me.)
Don't make me.
Don't even think about it.
Don't feed the trolls.
Don't get me wrong.
Don't hate.
Don't judge.
Don't tread on me.

I don't think

I think "I don't think" proposes to meld two nearly similar senses. The first sense, the one it actually says, is often overlooked. "I don't think A" tells me "there are people who think A, and I am not one of them". The other sense is "I think something something negated something something". The second sense is more or less "something is not happening, doesn't exist, doesn't occur, shouldn't be done, etc." It has the unfortunate construction of NOT in the sense that it refers to a thing not existing, and leaves the listener wonder what does exist, of all possible existences. And moving the "not" to the earlier clause increases the confusion. In the second sense, there is a comforting compactness expressed by moving a negative from somewhere in the second phrase to the "I think" phrase, so that the speaker always lazily knows where to put the negative, going from "I do think A should NOT be done" to "I do NOT think A should be done". To the listener, the "I don't think" construction can be interpreted several different ways: "I think NOT A should be done", "I think A should NOT be done", and the sense of "I am not one of them".

Let's ignore the confusion and assume that the speaker means the first sense. Like pretty much everything in my discussions here, "I don't think" perniciously invades my mind without letting me consider what it means, so I'm going to return to the first sense: "there are people who think A, and I am not one of them." Notice this: even if it only means the first sense, it sounds like the speaker is stating a stand, while it in fact removes the speaker from a stated stand.

What easy thing can the speaker do to remove the NOT and clarify their statement? I think they probably have to wait a moment before speaking, and first figure out where the "NOT" really goes in the farther reaches of the statement, then they have to wait another moment to figure out what the positive statement of the complement of the negative statement is. They may have to wait. If they do, then they will take time to make sense. By blurting out the "I don't think blah blah" they waste everyone's time, theirs included.

The AND world

Most people speaking English use the word "but" to box-out various small places of cause-effect. Many psych-nerd-types suggest that all "buts" can be replaced with "and". What does that win us? I call it "the AND world". All things co-exist. You could say "In a jungle there are fruits BUT there are nuts." You can just as logically say "In a jungle there are fruits AND there are nuts." The second jungle looks like it offers me more options, even though it's the same jungle with fruits and nuts coexisting. I could say "I have a sister BUT I have brothers" or I could say "I have a sister AND I have brothers." Both sentences are factually true. If I am looking for siblings, how do I benefit by boxing-out the siblings?

What about "I have a sister BUT I have no brothers"? I think it must mean something different from "I have no brothers BUT I have a sister". And I think that they both mean the same thing, down deep, as "I have a sister AND I have no brothers." Why do I prefer the AND world over the two BUT worlds?

There's an interesting thing about the AND world: I think it contains no "EQUALS". In other words, since there is always A AND B AND C AND..., I think A always stands in such a way that B is separate from it, so in the AND world, the A is what it is, and the B is what it is. In the AND world jungle, each fruit is different, each nut is different.

Colloquia

People "do science" alone and in teams. Even members of large teams spend alot of time alone with their thoughts while developing the work, and the process of writing up an experiment and its results is a fairly solitary task. Though the write-up may be peer-reviewed, the review often occurs by email, and so the exchange of views with the audience at that point may seem pretty solitary. And then your publication may raise not a ripple.

As a scientist, you will need to learn how to feed scientific return to others, and, just as important, you need to learn how and when to ingest it or not.

You can see the feed and ingest process at scientific meetings and in department colloquia on college campuses. You need to practice this process. You need to look at argument and results, and think and form questions. You need to practice to be open enough to swallow the whole argument, and doubtful enough to ward off the whole argument, at the same time, over the course of less than an hour. Scientific meetings in your field rarely occur in your town, while out-of-town visitors present colloquia in every college department nearly weekly. Since the mechanics of transmitting scientific return to other scientists are as important as the return itself, you can learn alot by going to colloquia in departments outside your field. Consider some whose field appears in your favorite novels or newspaper articles. The departments usually serve cookies and coffee. If you really want to see how the guest speaker thinks among colleagues, the department usually takes the guest out to dinner, and students are encouraged.

Computer science

"Computer science" is the name for a college degree. I suppose most people who obtain this degree end up doing something with computers. I suppose most people who do not obtain this degree end up doing something with computers. "Science" is a word that gets alot of undue mileage. I suppose that most people who get a computer science degree and end up doing something with computers will use a few more tricks they learned in class than people who did not learn those tricks. Maybe that makes it "science" and it makes them "scientists". For a long time I've been paid to push computers to do things that look very sciency and run special methods that only I ever built (some dabbling in the 1970s, then 1981-present), I say that I have made up alot of tricks even though I am not a computer scientist. I bet my tricks all have names, and I bet that each person with a computer science degree learned most of the names, and learned theorems describing how to evaluate the effectiveness of the trick versus other tricks. I did not.

Rough tools of science

I think science proceeds on the two essential tools of inspiration and "math". By "math" I mean the concept of using or building mental models with rules that anyone else can build in their mind.

This post will ignore those two essential tools. Instead, it will focus on tools that are less tantalizing than inspiration and "math", and that the scientist needs to be able to handle deftly.  I claim there are three: logic, the design of experiments, and statistics. These two plus three tools are the definition of science. This discussion will also ignore the careful philosophy that helps the whole thing roll: I will make many errors of imprecision in these descriptions. These are the rough tools of science.

The first toolset is the stuff generally called logic -- based on syllogistic manipulation (A ⇒ B, B ⇒ C ∴ A ⇒ B) -- in the real world. You know when you are for sure not using logic if you can spot the fallacy that you are in fact using. So you need to know the fallacies in order to understand what logic is.

The second toolset is the design of experiments. You have to be able to design an experiment that isolates the phenomenon and shows how it behaves under a condition and the lack of the condition. You should be able to see why you need to manipulate syllogisms in order to design experiments.

The third toolset is statistics. You need to know how many experiments need to be run in order to see if the outcomes are significant. If you happened to have used Venn diagrams when you learned logic, think about how to put numbers of observed cases in the four regions (A∩B, A∩¬B, ¬A∩B, ¬A∩¬B) of the conventional Venn diagram.

The logic and the fallacies were beginning to get laid down pretty well 2000 years ago. The rules of experimentation started being agreed on about 500 years ago. Statistical methods started 350 or so years ago, and the statistics ball was still barely rolling 100 years ago. People are born not knowing any of the three (maybe they are born knowing the other two: inspiration and rough "math"). They have to train themselves to use them. Each one of us finds our time here on Earth seems short. Spend the time practicing using the three rough tools and you may find that things make more sense. Well, sort of: things that make sense to other people will make less sense to you.