{"id":857,"date":"2013-06-18T20:38:59","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T01:38:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/?p=857"},"modified":"2013-06-18T20:38:59","modified_gmt":"2013-06-19T01:38:59","slug":"beer-and-formal-logic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/?p=857","title":{"rendered":"Beer and Formal Logic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-858\" alt=\"stella\" src=\"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/stella.jpg\" width=\"275\" height=\"183\" \/>There is a rather slow-paced and artsy beer commercial out right now for Stella Artois beer.\u00a0 I actually find the beer quite nice, but the commercial drives me crazy.\u00a0 It shows someone hand-blowing and painting a glass for the beer, then passing it out to a bar where it is filled with delicious Stella Artois and handed to the obligatory beautiful woman, who meets the glassblower.\u00a0 If that were all there were to it, I&#8217;d have no problem, as product fantasies go it is certainly more restrained than the standard beer can pop top filling a pool with water and bikini-clad women, or making a train come out of a car tunnel or something.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/xkcd.com\/1033\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-859\" alt=\"formal_logic\" src=\"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/formal_logic-300x236.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"236\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/formal_logic-300x236.png 300w, https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/formal_logic.png 386w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>But then they have to go an add the tagline &#8220;<em>If this much care goes in to the Chalice, imagine what goes in to the bee<\/em>r&#8221;.\u00a0 Now, in logic terms, we can reformat this as &#8220;If this much care goes into the chalice, something like this much care goes into the beer.&#8221;\u00a0 Or &#8220;if x then y&#8221;, where x represents a great deal of care in making the chalice, and y represents a great deal of care in making the beer.\u00a0 And as well all know, in this formulation, if x is true, then so is y.\u00a0 But of course <em>x isn&#8217;t true<\/em>.\u00a0 Which means we have no way of knowing the state of y (at least they didn&#8217;t say &#8220;<em>If and only if this much care goes in to the Chalice, imagine what goes in to the bee<\/em>r&#8221;, but still).\u00a0 The Stella Artois people, and their parent corporation InBev, have ruined the social contract of fantasy ads by making everything explicit.\u00a0 That is supposed to be subtext, dammit &#8211; once you straight up tell us that the fantasy will come true if we just buy your product we kind of know what&#8217;s happening.\u00a0 Just sell your beer, and leave the formal logic to others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a rather slow-paced and artsy beer commercial out right now for Stella Artois beer.\u00a0 I actually find the beer quite nice, but the commercial drives me crazy.\u00a0 It shows someone hand-blowing and painting a glass for the beer, then passing it out to a bar where it is filled with delicious Stella Artois [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}