These laws apply to logical expressions about things that exist. In other words: you can’t apply these laws to the unknown, which also includes the future. This is where we arrive at the edge of the rabbit hole: null represents nothingness/unknownness, so what the hell is it doing in a deterministic system of 1s and 0s?
Computer systems are purely logical, but the applications that we write, if they embrace Nulls, are apparently not. Null is neither true nor false, though it can be coerced through a truthy operation, so it violates Identity and Contradiction. It also violates Excluded Middle for the same reason. So why is it even there?
And suddenly a bunch of type theorists just winced. It is possible to have trivalent logic that's coherent. SQL does this -- and it makes sense to do it in that application.
I really don't like throwing the word "pseudo-intellectual" around because its mostly used to mean "I think I'm smarter than you".
However, this person begins their article poisoning the well, saying,
> I find that the people I talk to about this instantly flip on the condescension switch and try to mansplain this shit to me as if.
Proceeds to speak in that very same condescending tone, presenting a smarter-than-thou trundle down from the mountain. All the while including some nonesense about logic.
This person clearly has a chip on their shoulder: tacking on things about community-regulation in an article about Null, like all technical public engagement authors do. Let's signal "what good behaviour we expect" in the midst of a book pitch and a confused discussion of a technical matter.
One of these goals can be failed in its attempt with good nature. When you smush all this together it seems an exercise in performative intellectualism, or more accurately, pseudo-intellectualism.
Newer logics also don't use that law but instead deal with undecidability, which is less than a century old but is the most import result in logic since it's invention.
Computer systems are purely logical, but the applications that we write, if they embrace Nulls, are apparently not. Null is neither true nor false, though it can be coerced through a truthy operation, so it violates Identity and Contradiction. It also violates Excluded Middle for the same reason. So why is it even there?
And suddenly a bunch of type theorists just winced. It is possible to have trivalent logic that's coherent. SQL does this -- and it makes sense to do it in that application.