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From: Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: transpiling to low level C
Date: Sat, 04 Jan 2025 12:12:15 -0800
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antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) writes:

> Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> wrote:
>
>> The comments I made here, in two responses to postings of yours,
>> were not statements of opinion but statements of fact.
>
> They are opinions _about facts_, or if you prefer, opinion
> about truth value of some statements.
>
>>  They are
>> no more statements of opinion than a statement about whether the
>> Riemann Hypothesis is true is a statement of opinion.  Someone
>> might wonder whether an assertion "The Riemann Hypothesis is
>> true" is true or false, but it is still a matter of fact, not a
>> matter of opinion.
>
> It is reasobable to assume that you do not know if Riemann Hypothesis
> is true or false.  So if you say "Riemann Hypothesis is true",
> this is just your opinion.  I am not a native English speaker
> but I believed that "statements of opinion" means just that:
> person does not know the truth, but makes a statement.

A statement of opinion is a statement concerning a subjective
question, such as "Do cats make better pets than dogs?"  A
statement of opinion isn't ever right or wrong or true or false,
it merely expresses an individual point of view.  Most statements
that have a word like "should" or "good" or "bad" or "better",
etc., are statements of opinion.  That can change if the
qualifying words are given precise and objective definitions, but
in most cases they have not been.

A statement of fact is a statement concerning an objective question,
such as "Is every even number greater than 4 the sum of two prime
numbers?".  A statement of fact can be right or wrong or true or
false, even if it isn't known at the present time which of those is
the case.  The statement "Four colors suffice to color any planar
map such that adjacent regions do not have the same color" is a
statement of fact, both now and 60 years ago before the statement
had been proven.  Both P==NP and P!=NP are statements of fact, even
though one of them must certainly be false;  the key property is
that they are objective statements, subject to falsification.  If I
say "The Earth is flat", that is a statement of fact, even though
the statement is false.

In any case, my statements about a particular subset of C being
Turing Complete were statements of fact, and also true statements.