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)