> >> The intuition I pointed out was that if you have things were the > >> name of the thing can tell you everything you need to know about > >> it, then you have something that is a candidate for being a Literal. > > > > You still didn't give me an example of what could *not* be a > > literal, even though you stated that "there are in fact limitations > > on what can be a Literal." > > George Bush can not be a literal. I think that is clear. Even if he > thinks literally, that is without looking at the world. In case it wasn't clear, I'm with Garret on this one. Your intuition seems wrong to me. I really don't see how it could be true that everything I "need to know" about a particular integer or a particular date in human history can be be expressed in a small number of bits. The bits serve to point to a particular item in the value space, just because of a common convention. Maybe we've internalized that convention and become very used to it, but it's still just a convention. The idea that it takes 8 bits to represent the numbers 0..255 is based on assigned conventional meaning to those bits. We could establish a similar convention for other kinds of values (such as US Presidents), or location on earth, or etc. -- SandroReceived on Wednesday, 1 August 2007 20:01:43 UTC
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