Friday, November 22, 2013

Semantic Boolean Analysis of "Resist"

In my previous blog about Rififi, I had initially used the sentence "…I couldn't resist not writing about Rififi." I wondered if I'd made a mistake. Indeed, I had, which I later corrected to "…I couldn't resist writing about Rififi." Using an extra "not" had totally changed the meaning. Here's the Boolean analysis.

  • resist writing => I don't write
  • not resist writing => I write
  • resist not writing => I write
  • not resist not writing => I don't write

"Resist" beautifully takes on the role of the Boolean operand NOT. An even number of NOT operands cancel or negate each other. That is, NOT(NOT(X)) = X

And an odd number of NOT operands function as a single NOT. That is, NOT(NOT(NOT(X))) = NOT(X)

Hence,

  • I couldn't resist not writing = NOT(NOT(NOT(write))) = NOT(write) => I don't write
  • I couldn't resist writing = NOT(NOT(write)) = write => I write

Therefore, I corrected the sentence as I did write about Rififi.

I couldn't resist writing about the semantic Boolean analysis of "Resist!" - Faezal

3 comments:

Navamita Mukherjee said...

Reminds me of my algebra and statistics classes at school.

Faezal Yunus said...

You bet, Navamita. But it sure is fun when you apply bookish theory to real life!

Navamita Mukherjee said...

You are right Faezal, like some well known laws and principles of Physics.