{"id":89,"date":"2010-02-16T01:15:05","date_gmt":"2010-02-16T06:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/abrahamtiamiyu\/?p=89"},"modified":"2010-02-19T14:00:38","modified_gmt":"2010-02-19T19:00:38","slug":"the-enemy-of-my-enemy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/abrahamtiamiyu\/archives\/89","title":{"rendered":"The Enemy of My Enemy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Steven Strogatz, a mathematician at Cornell, \u00a0has a really interesting piece in the New York Times titled\u00a0<a title=\"The Enemy of My Enemy\" href=\"http:\/\/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/02\/14\/the-enemy-of-my-enemy\/?em\" target=\"_blank\">The Enemy of My Enemy<\/a> (02\/14\/2010). In the article, he argues that the mathematical rules behind negative numbers\u00a0can also be seen playing out in social and political events. For example, something most people &#8211; including myself &#8211; take for granted, i.e., the multiplication of negative numbers, could help explain the allegiances between European countries in the run-up to WWI.<\/p>\n<p>Also, there is a brief mention of the philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser. For those who don&#8217;t know of Morgenbesser, check out the following:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>1.) The most celebrated Morgenbesser anecdote involved visiting Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin, who noted that it was peculiar that although there are many languages in which a double negative makes a positive, no example existed where two positives expressed a negative. In a dismissive voice, Morgenbesser replied from the audience, \u201cYeah, yeah\u2026\u201d (also, &#8220;Yeah, right&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>Source: http:\/\/www.actuarialoutpost.com\/actuarial_discussion_forum\/showthread.php?t=34425<\/p>\n<p>2.)\u00a0Sidney Morgenbesser walks into a restaurant, has dinner, and then asks the waitress what they have for dessert. She says apple pie and blueberry pie. Sidney Morgenbesser says he\u2019ll have the apple pie. She comes back in a moment and says that they also have cherry pie. So Sidney Morgenbesser says \u201cIn that case, I\u2019ll have the blueberry pie.\u201d\u00a0<strong>[Independence of irrelevant alternatives]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Source: http:\/\/itre.cis.upenn.edu\/~myl\/languagelog\/archives\/001314.html<\/p>\n<p>3.) A policeman once approached Morgenbesser and told him there was no smoking on the subway. Morgenbesser responded that he was leaving the subway and hadn\u2019t lit up yet. When the cop said, \u201cIf I let you do it, I\u2019d have to let everyone do it,\u201d Morgenbesser replied, \u201cWho do you think you are \u2014 Kant?\u201d The cop mistook the German philosopher for a vulgar epithet, and Morgenbesser had to explain it all down at a police station.\u00a0<strong>[Categorical Imperative]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Source: http:\/\/www.actuarialoutpost.com\/actuarial_discussion_forum\/showthread.php?t=34425<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">Abraham Tiamiyu<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steven Strogatz, a mathematician at Cornell, \u00a0has a really interesting piece in the New York Times titled\u00a0The Enemy of My Enemy (02\/14\/2010). In the article, he argues that the mathematical rules behind negative numbers\u00a0can also be seen playing out in social and political events. For example, something most people &#8211; including myself &#8211; take for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2328,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","post-preview"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/abrahamtiamiyu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/abrahamtiamiyu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/abrahamtiamiyu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/abrahamtiamiyu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2328"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/abrahamtiamiyu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":61,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/abrahamtiamiyu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/abrahamtiamiyu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/abrahamtiamiyu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/abrahamtiamiyu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/abrahamtiamiyu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}