can think “X is Y” and hear somebody say “X is not Y” or “X doesn’t exist” and instead of arguing, I can remember that “both X and Y don’t exist” and internally hug whatever part of my brain has been scarred by the impression that X and Y are indeed things.
I think the key is in the definition of X.
For example, every natural number is either odd or even.
Try thinking about this from the statistician point of view. Like when you are observing some data, your brain recognizes certain patterns and correlations between them. Positive correlations are like “Every even number is also a natural number”. How does brain notice them? By noticing that whenever something matches one pattern, it also matches another.
But how should brain notice negative correlations? Upon something matching one pattern, trying matching to all the others? Like if “something is an odd number”, is it also “a sort of wine”, etc? I think, it doesn’t work this way.
I think, disjunctive syllogisms are more natural for the brain. Like when it notices first that “some natural numbers are also odd numbers” and “some natural numbers are also even numbers”. To combine such rules is much cheaper to notice that “every natural number is either an odd or an even but never the both”.
I think the key is in the definition of X.
For example, every natural number is either odd or even.
Try thinking about this from the statistician point of view. Like when you are observing some data, your brain recognizes certain patterns and correlations between them. Positive correlations are like “Every even number is also a natural number”. How does brain notice them? By noticing that whenever something matches one pattern, it also matches another.
But how should brain notice negative correlations? Upon something matching one pattern, trying matching to all the others? Like if “something is an odd number”, is it also “a sort of wine”, etc? I think, it doesn’t work this way.
I think, disjunctive syllogisms are more natural for the brain. Like when it notices first that “some natural numbers are also odd numbers” and “some natural numbers are also even numbers”. To combine such rules is much cheaper to notice that “every natural number is either an odd or an even but never the both”.