Learning via Negativa | Hacker News Reader

Learning via Negativa

matt-rickard.com

34 pointsrckrd8 comments

Yup, negative knowledge is more robust too

It only takes seeing one black swan to disprove “all swans are not white”

While you can observe 30 or 300 years of white swans, and never prove the converse: “all swans are white”

This might sound trivial to some people, until you start hearing “this is a 1 in 10,000 year event” from your banker, 5 times in 50 years

Also related to questions like “Is this airplane going to fall out of the sky?”

> only takes seeing one black swan to disprove “all swans are not white”

I think you mean 'disprove "all swans are white"', since a black swan tends to confirm the existence of non-white swans.

In other nitpicking news, the title should capitalize the V in Via since Via Negativa is the "Way of Negation", not "by means of Negation" as you might think from the current capitalisation.

I wonder how the average unit test fits into this. There’s something “negative” feeling about writing cases where you would expect a solution to likely fail and watching them pass. It’s different than proving it works. It seems similar to the “what not to do” point.

Furthermore:

In theology, the apophatic as a clearing of the unreal.

In problem-solving, the invert as a uncovering of beliefs.

I'm familiar with the historical context of apophatic theology, particularly Spinoza, but haven't seen your description before. Is this from a particular source, or how are you defining 'clearing' and 'unreal'?

It might be that the apophatic is best understood with it's counterpart in mind: the cataphatic. Whereas the apophatic is annihilating (sculpting into) whatever is not God (e.g., the finite), the cataphatic is constructing (amassing into) the good, the true, and the beautiful.

How is this different from reductio ad absurdum?

In via negativa you achieve risk reduction even if you stop before arriving at the absurd.

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