this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2024
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
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Because that's the logical fallacy of Denying the Antecedent . If "it's raining" then "the sidewalk is wet". Knowing that it's raining tells us something about the sidewalk, it's not dry, it's wet. And knowing the sidewalk is dry tells us something, it can't be raining (because if it was, the sidewalk would be wet).
But knowing "it is not raining" doesn't tell us about the sidewalk (it could be dry, it could be wet, maybe it rained earlier, maybe a dog peed on it). And similarly knowing the sidewalk is wet doesn't tell us anything about the rain.
So even if "mo money causes mo problems" all that tells us is that someone with mo money will not be problem free. People with no money might also have mo problems, the syllogism doesn't tell us about that.
The use of the word "more" in "more money more problems" indicates that both money and problems are continuous variables. Thus, the statement should be modeled with predicate logic, but with analysis. As phrased, the sentence implies a positive derivative between the two variables. If assumed to be valid over the complete range of possible values, "less money, less problems" indeed follows.
Which is where this logic fails. The saying is usually constricted to the range of "a lot of money" to "way too fucking much money", with money less than "a lot of money" not included. Therefore the derivative can be positive, negative, zero, or anything really. Also to be pedantic technically the derivative doesn't need to exist for a positive Δmoney to yield a positive Δproblems.
You forgot one thing. If it's raining, it might be pouring. But it might not be pouring. If it IS pouring however, the old man IS snoring.
So rain doesn't equal old man snoring, but pouring rain does.