I figure this is as good a place as any to flag a jargon-y nuance in the post title.
The post title is “Rationality !== Winning”, not “Rationality != Winning”. Different programming languages implement this somewhat differently, but typically ”!=” means “X not equal to Y” and ”!==” means “X not exactly equal to Y” (when there are various edge cases on what exactly counts as ‘equal’).
I think there is some sense in that Rationality is Winning, but I don’t think it’s true that it’s exactly equal to winning, and the difference has some implications.
typically ”!=” means “X not equal to Y” and ”!==” means “X not exactly equal to Y”
This is a tangent but PHP & Javascript are the only 2 programming languages that have a !== operator (in the top 20 languages by users), and they implement this extra operator to disable the type conversions automatically performed by !=.
Common wisdom is that these automatic conversions are a source of bugs and having them on the shorter, widespread != is bad design. All this to conclude that when I see !== it does trigger a slight eww, bad reaction.
I figure this is as good a place as any to flag a jargon-y nuance in the post title.
The post title is “Rationality !== Winning”, not “Rationality != Winning”. Different programming languages implement this somewhat differently, but typically ”!=” means “X not equal to Y” and ”!==” means “X not exactly equal to Y” (when there are various edge cases on what exactly counts as ‘equal’).
I think there is some sense in that Rationality is Winning, but I don’t think it’s true that it’s exactly equal to winning, and the difference has some implications.
Actually, I missed this one. I agree with you.
I would edit this into the main post. I am a programmer, but I missed it.
This is a tangent but PHP & Javascript are the only 2 programming languages that have a
!==operator (in the top 20 languages by users), and they implement this extra operator to disable the type conversions automatically performed by!=.Common wisdom is that these automatic conversions are a source of bugs and having them on the shorter, widespread
!=is bad design. All this to conclude that when I see!==it does trigger a slighteww, badreaction.This was a final straw-breaking-camels-back that led me to retitle the post.