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Comment by ARandomerDude | Hacker News Reader

Your comment is an example of a logical fallacy called "affirming the consequent." Borrowing from Wikipedia, a good example of affirming the consequent is:

1. If an animal is a dog, then it has four legs.

2. My cat has four legs.

3. Therefore, my cat is a dog.

The problem is the conclusion is the result of a reversal of the conditional statement. Similarly, you've said, essentially,

1. If I am an imposter, then I will not feel like an imposter.

2. I do not feel like an imposter.

3. Therefore I am an imposter.

The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent

ETA: If your comment was a joke, then forget everything I wrote – which does not mean that if you forget everything I wrote, then your comment was a joke. :-)

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What a clever way to finish of your point. It made my day.

There is a subtle difference though, in that imposter syndrome exists based on an individuals beliefs, which could be altered by reading about it regardless of whether or not that thought process is rational. So it could be reality created by a fallacy in a way.

That being said it was probably just a joke and now we’ve both overanalyzed it lol

It's a long way to say P => Q is not the same as Q => P or P <=> Q.

Agreed! I considered writing something along the lines of what you wrote, but I don't think most people would understand it who haven't already studied at least some logic.

No, it's a more accessible way of saying it.

I don't really agree. I find the long-winded version confusing, and as I am not sure if there is a gotcha somewhere in there, I have to read the whole thing and follow the whole argument. You don't necessarily have to use math symbols, but it really helps to be terse.

Pure solipsism.

Look at how many words you've already used, that's more than the original. So much for terseness.

One nit generates another; on and on it goes. I wasn't even further explaining the concept, just explaining why.

Why waste time say lot word when few do trick?

For anyone with even a passing knowledge of symbolic logic, what you provided is clear. But the explanation wouldn't be required for those people who are going to be familiar with that Fallacy anyway. It's for those who aren't aware of it. In that case, the symbolic version is of no help and the longer verbal explanation is important.

What about starting with a TL;DR for those who know symbols, then the detailed explanation?

But oh no, I think the edit window has closed for @ARandomerDude

There's no reason to use symbolic logic on a mixed-audience webboard, it's just a flex.

I reckon the point of the comment was to illustrate how the article's premise is rooted in the logical fallacy you describe, and how said fallacy then results in an inability to determine whether oneself is an impostor.

Is this related to mistaking an "if" statement in math as "if and only if" ?

Well, sort of - but we use "if" in day-to-day as a different thing to the material implication in logic. I've yet to run into a person using 'if and only if' in a way that doesn't map to the material equivalence, though, but I'm sure it must happen

Actually, this wikipedia article for has got a specific section about that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_conditional

Edit: I also just learned abou the 'Wason selection task' from that link. Cool stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task

I think so. The loosey-goosey language of "if" is usually (would need to actually check this) interpreted as an implication relationship

"B if A" or "If A, then B" interpreted as

A -> B

The fallacy would then be to do the following

A -> B

------------

On the other hand, iff is interpreted as A <=> B

i.e. A -> B and B -> A

So you can get A or B if you have B or A respectively.

yes, "if" statments in proofs are the "p->q" forms from logic, if you have p you also have q (therefore if no q then no p). If you imagine the set of all possible logical propositions as nodes in a graph, p->q tells you that q is reachable from p. If you prove that q is not reachable from whatever axioms you have (i.e. false), then p is false too by necessity, because otherwise q would be reachable and we know that's not the case. But if all you have is that q is reachable, that's not enough to assert that p is also reachable. Because you have no reason to believe that the road from p to q is the only one, it might very well be that p is false but q is reachable from another statment s or something.

"if and only if" is "p->q and q->p" (also equivalent to "p->q and not(p)->not(q), the more intuitive sense of the phrase), it basically establishes equivalence: any proof that requires p also requires q and vice versa, any proof that guarantees p also guarantees q and vice versa.

Watch out for zebra crossings.

Or Zebras crossing

And never, ever, cross a zebra.

At zebra crossings, watch out for zebras crossing?

But how are zebras on topic? Am I missing something

Ask yourself, if philosophers go on strike, who will it inconvenience?

And the one that got me when I was in the UK: The humped Zebra crossing.

Is that like a camel but with dazzle camouflage?

I don't think it's comparable to the first example and I don't think it's affirming the consequent.

It's more like a paradox where you start to loop. Similar to a sentence such as "I always lie".

Or it's kind of like a Dunning-Kruger where the premise would be that:

1. Smart people think they are dumb.

2. Dumb people think they are smart.

So you start to loop between those never being able to figure out if you are actually smart or dumb.

I supposed it was a pseudo-Godellian joke.

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