I don't agree. You can explain why something is true, right? (at least in some cases, not for all cases, you know, Gödel and all that). In such cases you can actually explain, it follows that if X is true, !X isn't true, and you have an obvious explaination for that.
Example: why is my shirt red? Because I only have red shirts on my house. Why isn't my shirt blue? Please refer to the previous explaination of why it's red, then it follows it can't be at the same time red and blue, etc etc.
And it's great it's like this, because otherwise we could be saying a lot of random predicates are false and no one could argue with us. So I think asking someone "why x is false" isn't illogical, after all if there is a reason to say "x is false", surely there is a way to prove it's false indeed.
Edit: part of the problem with this discussion, of course, is that there is not a fixed meaning for "why". "Why" is a very ambiguous question, it doesn't specify whether we want to know the intention, the proof, the cause, etc. And even, what is a cause? If you are talking about historic events indeed you can't explain why X didn't happen, but from the same pov you couldn't ever explain why Y did happen at all, if you see history as something deterministic & linear. So whether you're right or wrong actually depends on what you see on the word why...
My thesis for this essay is that the Great Gatsby is not an allegory for animal beastiality. First of all, Gatsby contains no animal characters. Because of this, the likelihood that F. Scott Fitzgerald's work was a veiled reference to man-on-animal love is very low. Second, there is no evidence than any of the characters are attracted to animals. While Gatsby does have an attraction to Daisy, there is nothing in the text to indicate that her character metaphorically embodies animalistic qualities. In conclusion, there is no possible way that the Great Gatsby represents an attempt to introduce zoophilia to mainstream American society. After examining all of the evidence one can clearly see that this simply cannot be the case.
First of all, Gatsby contains no animal characters.
The Great Gatsby contains two dogs and a cat. While none are given names, one of the dogs (an Airedale bought by Myrtle Wilson) appears several times and has some identifiable characteristics.
Second, there is no evidence than any of the characters are attracted to animals.
In fact, it contains this scene:
"She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ecstasy and swept into the kitchen, implying that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there."
In conclusion, although bestiality is not one of the novel's primary themes, there is evidence that at least one character makes out with a dog at some point.
Please note: the only reason I have time to go and grep -iw gatsby.txt for "dog" is that I'm waiting for the program I'm writing to finish executing. This is why speed is important in exploratory programming.
I don't understand this argument. When someone says "Why don't you... X?" are you going to enumerate all the things you'd rather do than X, and then explain that the effort involved in doing those things precludes X? Or are you just going to say "That's a stupid question. Tell me why I should."
Well, enumerating a finite list of things is not something you wouldn't do in a math proof. Now if I say: X="primes are all multiples of three", "why isn't X true?", there are many obvious answers to that. For starters, because there's at least an element of primes (7), that is not a multiple of three.
That should be enough to disprove: "there's never an explanation for why something isn't true", and that's the point. I would have preferred a simple explaination of why PG thinks X isn't true than the assertion that such a thing can't be explained (actually I suspect he was being humourous or something like that, obviously he has to have a reason to think like he thinks).
Also, you can always reply: "because I don't want to!", or "because I have other things to do", or "because I don't see a reason to" (it's like asking "why should I..?"), to "why don't you ... X?" :)
I agree that "why is Boston not in Oklahoma?" is a question without a sensible answer, but that has nothing to do with the fact that it is of the form "why does X not have property Y?" You will notice that "Why is Boston in Massachussetts?" is not a question with a sensible answer either.
Similarly, "why is your shirt not blue" is a silly question, unless there's any reason to suppose that it might be. For instance, if you show up to my "blue shirts only" party wearing a non-blue shirt, it's a perfectly valid question.
Now, as for questions about "Why is X not important for Y?", these can have sensible answers. Why is aerodynamics not important for a lunar lander? Because it never flies through air. Why is peanut butter not important for a lunar lander? Now that is a silly question, because nobody would suppose it might be.
So a question like "Why is speed not important in exploratory programming?" should really have a sensible answer. You could, for instance, say something like "Because in exploratory programming you typically only need to run short tests which don't take a lot of time anyway". To which I'd reply "Oh, I don't know about that, I typically run tests which take quite a long time". To which you could say "Oh, well I'm sure there are some cases where it is, but for most people most of the time it isn't". And I'd say "Yes, I agree with that statement".
No, there's really no answer to the question of why aerodynamics isn't important for a lunar lander.
The answer you give to that, as you imply in a later paragraph, is really an answer to the question "if a typical person thought aerodynamics was important for a lunar lander, why would they be mistaken?" It's fairly easy to answer that, at least with respect to our peers; we're used to vehicles designed with wind resistance in mind. But this is not the answer to the question of why it's not the case that aerodynamics is necessary for a lunar lander.
Similarly, though there is no answer to the question of why it's not the case that speed is necessary in exploratory programming, I could, if I knew why the OP mistakenly thought it was, have explained why he was wrong. But while I could guess why one of my peers might mistakenly think aerodynamics mattered for a lunar lander, I have no idea why the OP might think speed mattered for exploratory programming.
Sigh. What a huge waste of time this thread has been. I feel like I've just spent an hour trying to convince someone that the Monte Carlo fallacy was false.
OK, I accept that if we're going to be pedantic (and honestly, being pedantic is one of my favourite hobbies too) then the question would really be "if a typical person thought aerodynamics was important for a lunar lander, why would they be mistaken?"
In fact, one could clarify the question a little for the benefit of somebody who couldn't see why anybody would be so confused as to think that aerodynamics had anything to do with the moon, by saying: "Given that aerodynamics are important for many [though not all] vehicles, what properties of a lunar lander distinguishes it from those other vehicles in such a way as to make aerodynamics irrelevant?"
So ahem, bearing that in mind, given that speed is important in many [though not all] programming tasks, what properties distinguish exploratory programming from those other types of programming in such a way as to make speed irrelevant?
I'm not convinced yet, but I don't want to make this argument longer. It wasn't my intention to make you or anybody lose time (sorry if I did, truly!), I just thought you were pointing something that failed to be true and that I could correct you in a friendly manneer. Your comment is interesting and I'll think about it, but as far as I could see it seems to work only in particular cases and not in all negative cases, as you had pointed before. But I need to think more about it to be sure. Thanks for your time and for your explainations.
Once, in college, I visited one of my professors and his wife. In the middle of a conversation the wife asked, "Why isn't this ink refill small enough to fit in this pen?" His answer was an amused, "What kind of existential question is that?"
This may be true of facts, but there is no problem with explaining why your opinion is one way and not the other.
Unless you are asserting that speed not being important is a fact of exploratory programming, rather than PG's opinion, I see no problem with answering my initial question.
If it makes you feel better though, I can rephrase:
There's still no answer to that question. If I needed speed, I could explain why. But there's no answer to the question of why you don't need speed.
I need a bottle opener to get the lid off a bottle. I need it because I need to bend the lid. I don't need a scarf to get the lid off a bottle. Why not? There's no reason you don't need a scarf to get the lid off a bottle; it's just not that useful.
This is semantics, it depends on what meaning you give the word "why"... you are talking about why as in causes here, but I don't think that was what you were asked about when somebody said "why isn't speed important?"
"Boston is not in Oklahoma because it's in Massachusetts, and Oklahoma and Massachusetts are two separate states and no city can belong to two states at once (afaik)." Doesn't that sound like an explaination?
Now, an explaination of "why isn't speed important", could be, for example, that it's not important because it doesn't affect your final productivity at all, or at least not in a considerable way compared to some N other factors.
Now, what's the cause of such a difference in the final users' productivity, maybe that can't be answered. But I don't think you were asked about it.
Sorry for wasting your time with this discussion, but I don't really see your point. Maybe I'm wrong after all but until now I don't see how that could be.
