Quote:
Originally Posted by w1k0
It seems that the average Slackware Linux user is much smarter than the average computer user.
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I don't see any evidence that could justify such a conclusion. Besides, I guess it can be potentially offensive to users of other distros.
It seems that Slackware appeals more to people involved with computers professionally, as well as folks who feel that Slackware is more fun and challenging than other distributions (this is my case).
However, I don't see anything that could justify something like this:
Quote:
A uses system S1
B uses system S2
Therefore, A is smarter than B
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I hope no one is going to feel offended.
To return on-topic, sometimes it is difficult to know which operating systems people are actually using, despite any evidence one might have. In fact, one should decide first which are the necessary and sufficient conditions for being able to state that someone is knowing something.
For example, given a statement P, someone once said that A knows that P
if and only if P is true, A believes that P is true, and A is justified in believing that P is true.
Let's say that Barzillai has a very strong evidence for believing that his friend Seamus is a true Macpup user. In fact, he remembers that in the past, when he saw Seamus with a computer, this was always running Macpup. Besides, Barzillai knows a girl named Geneviève, whom he didn't see for many years. He remembers that Geneviève was a Free Software fan, but he doesn't know which system she's using now.
According to the above definition and evidence, Barzillai has the right to say, «Seamus is a Macpupper or Geneviève uses Debian». He is also justified when he affirms, «Geneviève switched back to Windows or Seamus is a Macpupper». Moreover, he could declare as well that «Seamus is a Macpupper or Geneviève is a Slacker».
Now, we discover by chance that Seamus actually doesn't like Macpup at all: in fact, when Barzillai saw him, Seamus was always using Salvatore's laptop, because for some obscure reason his Windows box had crashed. Moreover, Geneviève actually switched from Ubuntu to Slackware five years ago and she is now a true Slacker - but Barzillai doesn't know that.
So it seems that Barzillai still has the right to say, «I know that Seamus is a Macpupper or Geneviève is a Slacker», even though he doesn't know at all what is actually going on. Is that true?
Note This one was inspired by
this problem. Before someone feels referred to for whatever reason, all names were chosen "randomly", and there's no connection between them and real persons. Moreover, the situation described was only intended to be a pretext to have some fun, showing a classical problem of knowledge theory.