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Comment by Thane2600 | Hacker News Reader

my complete shock that anything in this article is unknown to all is inversely proportional to my programming abilities.

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Ten Thousand: https://xkcd.com/1053/

Saying 'what kind of an idiot doesn't know about the Yellowstone supervolcano' is so much more boring than telling someone about the Yellowstone supervolcano for the first time.

For that matter, it's probably more fun than talking to someone who already knows about Yellowstone.

"Isn't Yellowstone awesome!" "Yep, it sure is." "..." "..."

I... can't parse that sentence.

Then you may be very shocked that anything in this article is unknown

Alright, I parse it, and I blame the post-finals slump I'm caught in. Propositionally, the relationship's fine and it's clearly stated, despite what sleepy-me might've thought a couple hours ago. But what's the useful assertion? Assume high programming skill, low shock; is it trying to say that programmers are obviously all socially oblivious? Does it say that it's especially common for everyone to know any amount less than all of the information in the link?

Heck, is an inverse-corollary relationship even meaningful if you only have one datum (one double of the two observations he's made) and not a sliding range?

Stanford Parser (http://nlp.stanford.edu:8080/parser/index.jsp) actually parses it correctly!

  (ROOT
  (S
    (NP
      (NP (PRP$ my) (JJ complete) (NN shock))
      (SBAR (IN that)
        (S
          (NP
            (NP (NN anything))
            (PP (IN in)
              (NP (DT this) (NN article))))
          (VP (VBZ is)
            (ADJP (JJ unknown)
              (PP (TO to)
                (NP (DT all))))))))
    (VP (VBZ is)
      (ADVP (RB inversely))
      (VP (VBG proportional)
        (PP (TO to)
          (NP (PRP$ my) (NN programming) (NNS abilities)))))
    (. .)))

I agree that it's quite convoluted, but surprisingly it's not incorrect

Funny how they can write a parser that converts natural language strings into a syntax tree, but they can't configure an nginx proxy on port 80 :-p

Interesting, it's perfectly valid and imho clear.

I'm a little confused. Thane2600 has 'complete shock' and that is inversely proportional to his programing abilities therefore he can't program?

It's the semantics rather than the syntax that are tricky.

If something is simply complete, can it still be proportional to something? Let me illustrate the conundrum with some other sentence:

"My complete and undying love for you is proportional to my blood alcohol level."

For values of proportional equal to caused by, I suppose.

> It's the semantics rather than the syntax that are tricky.

Ah, I take your point; just drop the word complete , it makes sense if you're a bit less pedantic here.

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