Talk:Mu (negative)

Citing The Hacker's Dictionary as an RS about general English use of a term

@Neo Purgatorio, to clarify my point: The Hacker's Dictionary is certainly published, but being published isn't the only criterion for whether a source is reliable, a judgement that also depends on the nature of the claims. As far as I know, the dictionary was written by two computer scientists, and I am not aware of any input by any trained lexicographers. It is much, much better now that you've attributed the claim to him, but I still have doubts as to whether Raymond can be considered a reliable source here. Remsense诉 17:51, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

I can understand the issues with using Raymond as a source here; I've been trying to find a better source for it. Gödel, Escher, Bach, which is mentioned above the part I re-added, was written by Douglas Hofstadter, who is also a computer scientist. It references "mu" as a response to loaded questions as well, and Raymond states that Hofstadter would agree with the use of "mu" as an answer to the question, but I couldn't find the specific "Have you stopped beating your wife?" text within his book (although, I only did a quick run-through and not a full analysis of it, so I could've just simply missed it.) As Hofstadter's book does generally consider "mu" to be an answer to all loaded questions though, I think the loaded question used there could be used as an example (albeit, with a source change.) Neo Purgatorio (talk) 20:35, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

I enjoyed that book when I read it! Two sources are considerably better than one in this case, I appreciate your diligence in response to my pedantry. Welcome to Wikipedia, by the way. Remsense诉 22:12, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

My understanding of mu, such as it is, comes from Hofstadter. He never defines the term, but says that in the koan, its use unasks the question, leaving me with the impression that any answer would lead the student astray; that he can only learn by not being handed the answer. I've no idea if that's right or not, but that's what I ended up with. JDZeff (talk) 21:12, 26 June 2025 (UTC)