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From: David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: transpiling to low level C
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2024 08:43:07 +0100
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On 23/12/2024 03:41, Waldek Hebisch wrote:
> 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.

You can program in C without the "normal" conditional statements or 
expressions.  You can make an array of two (or more) function pointers 
and select between them using your controlling expression, and that 
should be sufficient for conditionals.  (There may be other methods too.)

So as far as I can see, Tim gave statements of fact, not opinion.

You can say that Tim's posts were patronising, arrogant, and irritating. 
  /That/ would be an opinion - a /justified/ opinion because it is 
backed up in the evidence of these posts and corroborating evidence from 
previous posts and discussions from Tim.  But without some kind of 
precise definition of the terms involved and a robust and repeatable 
method of classification, it could not be called "fact".

You could say that Tim's posts were intended to be annoying, or you 
could say that he has refused to give an answer to how C can be used 
without the "normal" conditionals because he realises he was wrong in 
his posts and won't admit it.  That would be /unjustified/ opinion - or 
"speculation" - because we have no way of knowing his motives or 
anything more than what he wrote in his posts.


You could, quite fairly, characterise Tim's posts as unjustified 
statements of fact - because he has stated his claim as fact, but has 
given no justification or reasoning, and it is not something that is 
obvious or well-known to people.

> 
>>   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.

I think if anyone knew the truth of falsity of the Riemann Hypothesis - 
i.e., they had a proof one way or the other - we'd have heard about it!

> So if you say "Riemann Hypothesis is true",
> this is just your opinion.

No, that would not be an opinion.  It would be an unjustified claim.  "I 
/believe/ the Riemann Hypothesis is true" is an 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.
> 

No, an opinion is a personal preference or judgement.  That's very 
different from not knowing about something factual.  If I say "the 
number 17 will turn up in next week's lottery numbers", that's not an 
opinion, it's a claim about facts.  It's an unjustified claim, since I 
don't know if it is true or not, but it's not an opinion.

It is not always clear when something is a fact or not, and whether a 
statement is a justified statement of fact, an unjustified statement of 
fact (i.e., it might happen to be true, but you have not presented 
evidence of it), a justified opinion, or an unjustified opinion.  I'm 
sure there's a philosophy group on Usenet somewhere, but I doubt if 
cross-posting there would lead to any clarification!