The Only Chapter
Just as Twilight Sparkle shelved the last book, a shower of shattered glass cascaded onto her head. A ball of cyan fur and feathers barrelled across the library floor, colliding with the shelf on the opposite wall before coming to a standstill as half the books on the shelf fell upon it.
Twilight carefully stepped through the broken glass and started picking up the books. “Rainbow, I don’t see why you can’t just use the front door like every pony else.”
“Doors aren’t my style, nerd,” Rainbow Dash explained, standing up, folding her wings carefully, and rubbing the back of her head, where a particularly voluminous book by Colt Gustav Amble had landed.
Twilight’s horn lit, and the shattered glass reassembled into a window, slotting itself perfectly into the pegasus-shaped hole that her friend had left in her wake. “So annoying,” she muttered to herself.
Rainbow looked at Twilight, kicking the floorboards with a hoof. After some time, she said, “wellllll…”
“What?” Twilight asked.
“Aren’t you going to ask me about my trip to Las Pegasus?”
Twilight sat down at her writing desk. “Oh yes… with Fluttershy. How did it go?”
“Totally awesome!”
“Of course. Anything else to say on the matter?”
Rainbow was confused. What else did Twilight want to know? “Errr…”
“Like weren’t you supposed to be studying bird migration patterns or something?”
Rainbow’s eyes lit up. Something else awesome that she could talk about! “Oh yes… Fluttershy had me following a flock of ravens around, trailing them to see where they go. Ravens are super fast, but not as fast as Rainbow Dash!”
“Oh,” Twilight said, “I’ve never actually seen a raven. Read about them in Edgar Allen Pony books, but never seen one.”
“Meh, they’re just black birds, Twilight. Nothing special.”
“Are they all black?” Twilight asked.
Rainbow shrugged. “Head to toe.”
Twilight shook her head. “No, no… you misunderstand me… is each individual raven black?”
“Yeah, sure,” Rainbow replied.
“But how can you be sure?”
Rainbow sensed another one of Twilight’s talks coming on and didn’t like it. “I don’t know… they just are. Every raven I’ve seen is black.”
Twilight stood up and emerged from behind her writing desk and began pacing the floor. “Let us examine the proposition, all ravens are black.”
Rainbow groaned.
Twilight continued. “Now, you see a raven, and it is black. This doesn’t prove our proposition—”
“Your proposition,” Rainbow interrupted.
“Our proposition. It doesn’t prove our proposition, but it is evidence in support of it. Right?”
“I guess,” Rainbow said. “Until I see a white raven anyway.”
“Well, yes.” Twilight smiled. “Exactly. That would entirely disprove our proposition. Very good. You’re learning.” Rainbow rolled her eyes and Twilight continued. “But you haven’t seen a white raven. Every raven you’ve seen has been black. Each time you’ve seen a black raven, it has added evidence to support our proposition. No matter how many black ravens you see, you’ll never prove our proposition, but we can gain confidence in it.”
“Okay,” Rainbow said a little hesitantly.
“But…”
“I knew there’d be a but.”
Twilight smiled. “There’s always a but.”
“You’re always a butt,” Rainbow muttered under her breath.
“But our proposition, all ravens are black can be restated another way. All non-black things are non-ravens.”
“What?” Rainbow asked.
“Think about it. It’s saying the same thing. If all ravens are black, then logically anything which isn’t black cannot be a raven, right?”
Rainbow scratched her head. “I guess.”
“And if anything which is white, or red, or blue, or green, or yellow, or whatever isn’t a raven, then it means all ravens must be black, right?”
“Aha.”
Twilight looked triumphant. “Exactly! So our two propositions are equivalent. All ravens are black. All non-black things are non-ravens.”
“So what?” Rainbow asked.
“But you see, this is how we can add more evidence in favour of our original proposition!”
Rainbow shook her head. “I don’t get it.”
“Look at my writing desk” Twilight pointed. “What colour is it?”
“Brown,” Rainbow answered.
“So it’s non-black.”
“Sure.”
Twilight smiled. “And is it a raven?”
“Of course not.”
“Precisely,” Twilight argued. “It’s a non-black thing and it’s a non-raven.”
“So what?” Rainbow asked, clearly confused.
“Well, it supports our proposition, all non-black things are non-ravens.”
Rainbow thought she’d spotted an early flaw in Twilight’s argument. “It doesn’t prove it though!”
Twilight nodded. “No, it doesn’t prove it. Just like seeing one raven doesn’t prove all ravens are black. But it’s evidence in favour of the proposition.” Twilight walked around the room pointing at things. “Look at my red coffee cup. This yellow book. This green carpet. The blue sky out there. All of that is evidence in favour of our proposition that all non-black things are non-ravens.”
“But this bookmark is black, and it isn’t a raven,” Rainbow pointed out.
“Yes, the bookmark is black, but our second proposition doesn’t talk about black things. It talks about non-black things. All non-black things are non-ravens. So a black bookmark doesn’t add any evidence for or against that proposition.”
Rainbow admitted defeat on this small matter. “Yeah.”
“So by walking around this room, we’ve found quite a lot of evidence that all non-black things are non-ravens, right?”
“So what?” Rainbow asked.
“Well, like I said earlier. Our two propositions are exactly equivalent. If all non-black things are non-ravens, then all ravens are black.”
“And?”
“Which means, by looking around this room, without observing any ravens, we’ve added evidence in favour of our original proposition that all ravens are black!”
“What?” Rainbow asked, suddenly shocked.
“My writing desk, my coffee cup, that book, the sky… all of it is evidence that all ravens are black.”
“That makes no sense whatsoever,” Rainbow said.
“Prove it.”
Rainbow started to cry.
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Wedge out, Rainbow! Use wedge out!!
Damn.
You're good at this.
8021839
Thanks.
Rainbow, please go paint a raven white now...
XD, never call someone a nerd.
To be fair to Rainbow, she did have to first observe a Raven. Without knowing what Raven looked like in the first place, she couldn't have known the basis of the theory that all ravens are black. So Twilight's statement:
Is false. Other than that, good job. Fucked my head up.
8022091 it's true, since:
a) all ravens are black
b) there are no ravens in the room
c) nothing in the room noted is black
Thus, since there isn't any black objects or ravens, we can deduce using context clues that ravens are indeed black.
8022117 I never meant to say that it wasn't. Furthermore, point C is incorrect because Rainbow does indeed say that a bookmark in the room is black, which Twilight uses to note that the statement — all non-black things are non-ravens — doesn't mention black things.
It's a perfectly fine statement.
Fuck.
My.
Life.
>.< >.< >.< >.< >.<
Thank you for killing my brain!!
GAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!
....I repeat my statement from the previous story. Seriously, at this point Twi's just torturing the poor girl.
8022262 darn.
I replied like an hour after I'd read it, so I kinda forgot a bit, but in reality I just wanted to sound smart.
“Doors aren’t my style, nerd,” Rainbow Dash explained, standing up, folding her wings carefully, and rubbing the back of her head, where a particularly voluminous book by Colt Gustav Amble had landed
I'm pretty sure dash would say egghead instead of nerd
That picture is from those IDW comics, right?
8022474
Nerd, for reasons.
8022499
It is, yes.
It use to be thought all swans are white. Then someone went to Australia and found black swans.
8022851
In Australia, it used to be thought that all swans were black.
Twilight: This sentence is false!
Rainbow: Um, true. I'll go with true. Yeah, that was easy. I'll be honest, I might have heard that one before, though. Sorta cheating.
Twilight: It's a paradox, there is no answer!
Rainbow: Eh, false. A good false.
Twilight started to cry.
Paradox
8023458
Watched the first video. The Monty Hall Problem isn't really a paradox — it's just counter-intuitive. The unexpected hanging paradox is one of my current favourites. I've been explaining it to people for the past few days. Theseus's ship might make a good third story in this series.
And that's why double-counting evidence is a big no-no thing
8023641 Do it.
Do it with A.J.'s barn !
what about:
Video 1
1) A.J.'s barn
2) princess Celestia
3) three gift form Pink Pie
4) Surpris party form Pink Pie
5) donem, some what, Season 5 Episode 25 & 26 ?
6) I.. don't have one for this one
7) a flying R.D.
8 & 9) ....
Video 2
4) done, season 2 episode 20 it's about time
3) do you have one for that one ?
2) Twilght !
1) Mhm...
p.s. I have some in FR
8022283 This time Rainbow really did provoke Twilight. Don't bust Twilight's stuff.
Twilight needs a better outlet for her Sophistry... politics perhaps.
8024854
The most she did was call Twilight a nerd, and that's not exactly much provoking since she's called her egghead before.
But if I rephrase it without using ravens...
Proposition 1: All square things are rectangular things
Proposition 2: All non-square things are non-rectangular things
Ball? Non-square and non-rectangular. Lamp? Non-square and non-rectangular. Book? Whoops--it's a non-square that is rectangular in shape. Proposition 2 is false.
8025277
She crashed through the library again, damaging books as they fell to the ground. She might be able to fix a hole, but a book is a different issue. I mean, they can still be fixed, but Rainbow fucking hurt the book.
8023673
When you say AJ's barn, do you mean it in the same sense as Theseus' Ship?
A damn good story VitalSpark. I loved the last one too.
So then, how is a raven like a writing desk?
"Because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is NEVAR put with the wrong end in front!"
8025609 Yes, look at the video
8025718
I didn't want to watch the video, I already knew the "non-ponified" version of the paradox. I just wanted to know if it was the same concept.
8025732 it is, and here's one that is Pokemon
8025739
Ok, let's do this!
1. Maybe the Pokémon say the same thing, but people just hear them differently. A list of cross-linguistic onomatopoeais, with for example, a dog barking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linguistic_onomatopoeias#Dog_barking
Notice the differences in spelling? The same thing is going on with hearing in Pokémon.
2. Not even possible. Pokéballs don't break partially (joke). This is Theseus' Ship. Pretty good.
3. They're both basically right. Therefore, whoever wins the battle gets the favorable end of the deal (teacher wins, payment occurs, student wins, no payment)
4. That...is so bad...that's not how statistics and probability works...go back to highschool please. This is physically paining me. (The YouTuber, not you).
5. Not possible. Can't grab another person's Pokéball, otherwise Oak will get into your head and say This isn't the time to use that! (joke)
I know this isn't what you expected from me, but this is what you get. Nice video, apart from #4.
8025946 Do you know FR ?
p.s. let's do the rest in P.M.s
8023641 so this implies there WILL be a sequel, yes? This pleases me
But, by that logic, doesn't that also mean that all black things are ravens?
8027937 As the second proposition didn't talk about black things, neither did the first talk about non-raven black things.
I just read this.
It sounds nuts.
This is why I don't deal in the world of philosophy.
Seriously, twice in a row Twilight's decided to pull philosophical bullshit out to mess with Rainbow.
Seriously, condescending bitch. Emphasis on bitch.
8026204
Possibly. I like trilogies.
8025530
No, proposition 2 should be: all non-rectangular things are non-square things. Which is true: find a ball; this is non-rectangular, and you'll also find it's non-square.
8027937
Mentioned in the fic - the second proposition "all non-black things are non-ravens" does not deal with black things, and the only correlation is the first proposition asserting that "all ravens are black"
There would have to be a worded inclusion or exclusion in a proposition to assert something, like "all black things are ravens", which is absurd and thus Twilight, speaking logically, would not assert it.
But, but, but... there are albino ravens...
I feel so bad for Rainbow.
You can has review.
I'd expect this kind of insane troll logic from Pinkie, not Twilight.
8537558
It becomes a lot more clear if you imagine a universe with only a few things in it, say 500 total. Ravens and not-ravens. You want to check that all ravens are black. If there are very few ravens, say 3, then it's easy to just check all the ravens. On the other hand, if there are 495 ravens, then maybe it's easier to check the non-black things. Say there are 4 non-black things. That's a lot less effort, but it gets the same result, if one of these is a raven, then you have a white raven (or a pink raven or some other kind of raven) and not all ravens are black.
Another way to look at it is that maybe finding black things, and therefore ravens, is really hard. Our imagined universe consists of only five hundred things, so it's pretty dark, and finding black things is a chore. So even if there are way more non-black things than black (and therefore, presumably ravens), it may be less effort to check non-black things.