What defines a truly smart person?

[julian]

If I have flour in a canister over here, milk in the jug over there and lard in the tin in the pantry then in what sense do I have a biscuit. And how many?

I get what you were saying. And yes these are the questions that would be need to be answered when coming up with a definition of your biscuit. And there are many ways of defining your biscuit.

I was assuming this definition was already in place and that you started with 28 of them.

 

[jbriggs444]

I get what you were saying. And yes these are the questions that would be need to be answered when coming up with a definition of your biscuit. And there are many ways of defining a biscuit.

I was assuming this definition was already in place and that you started with 28 of them.

I am not trying to be difficult. But you claimed that conservation of the number of biscuits follows from conservation of mass.

The mass of the flour, milk, salt, lard, etc that go into a batch of 28 biscuits is indeed close to the mass of the resulting biscuits. But you started with no biscuits and ended with 28.

The mass of the 28 biscuits hot from the oven will be similar (though not identical!) to the mass of the biscuits that you eventually eat. Yet any mass discrepancy does not alter the number of biscuits you have.

The mass of the biscuits you eat can be accounted for if you weight yourself before and after the meal. Yet you started with 28 biscuits and ended with fewer objects which would be regarded by anyone as a "biscuit".

And yes, I am sure that you are right that the folks you are arguing with are idiots who think that they have "disproved subtraction" (whatever that means). But there are a couple little quotes that I like to use:

"If you find yourself arguing with an idiot, chances are good that he is doing the same"

"Never argue with an idiot. They'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience".

 

[julian]

Let me explain what this is all about. Say you start with 28 biscuits on your plate of you eat 2 of the biscuits. There MUST then be 26 biscuits left behind on the plate because this is the only way that:

"Your weight before the meal + the weight of 28 biscuits = your weight after the meal + the weight of the biscuits left behind on the plate."

Here's the thing...These people I know have got this odd idea in their heads that you can start with 28 biscuits, eat 2 biscuits and then have say 27 biscuits left behind on the plate instead. But this does not conserve mass! (I'll explain later why they have come to this bizarre conclusion that you can have say 27 biscuits left behind on the plate).

 

[fresh_42]

Seems we are at a stage where a harmless, maybe lame joke turned into an overkill, both of which are way off-topic. I assume this is because the initial question has been answered sufficiently in many ways.

This thread is therefore closed now.