My Wife’s Logic (or Women’s Logic Explained?)

For all of you who learned boolean algebra in your CS courses in college, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news: your education was incomplete. The list of boolean tautologies and truth tables that you may have memorized or learned over time was wrong, with some startling and glaring errors.

To rectify this, I present some new truth.

First, an example in real life, which really happened. For context, Leticia is my wife, has beautiful, olive skin, with dark brown eyes, and hair with various colors of brown, and the little girl in discussion was as white as can be.

Leticia: Look at that little girl–she’s so beautiful! Do you think we’ll ever have a girl who looks like her?

Me: No.

L: So you think our daughter will be ugly!

M: Uhhh……no. I don’t think she’ll be white.

Transforming this little conversation into boolean logic:

A: This little girl is beautiful

B: Our future daughter will look like this girl

C: Our future daughter will be beautiful

So my wife says that AB–>C, and that if I say !B, then !B–>!C. I always knew that, but what I didn’t know is that the other options I thought existed aren’t actually valid! (i.e., that !B–>C is also true, or in other words, that C can be true regardless of the value of B) Who knew! So I present below corrected truth tables. Wikipedia, take note.

Standard Truth Table for Implication

Improved Truth Table for Implication

X Y X–>Y
F F T
F T T
T F F
T T T
X Y X?Y
F F T
F T F
T F F
T T T

So you see that the correct form of implication when dealing with this logic is the same as equality.

Now you know, beware.

2 thoughts on “My Wife’s Logic (or Women’s Logic Explained?)

  1. Leticia

    Ah, it is true that this conversation took place, and it is completely illogical if you look at it in the strict sense of the phrase, “look like her.” In my mind, however, “look like her” meant “look as cute as her,” or “our daughter’s quality of cuteness will resemble this little girl’s quality of cuteness.” From this point of view, it makes sense to say that you think our girl will be ugly if you think her quality of cuteness will not be similar to the other girl’s.

    Not all women think this way, so perhaps you should keep the title of the blog “My Wife’s Logic.”

    I should also point out that men are not immune to thinking illogically. For example, the other day you expressed concern that you will not be able to program unless you purchased the all-new 5,195-piece Lego Millennium Falcon. Interfering variables might prevent you from working, such as your preoccupation over wanting the 5,195-piece Lego Millennium Falcon, taking time to figure out what pieces you’ll need to add to your 19,429-piece Lego collection to build the 5,195-piece Lego Millennium Falcon on your own, and/or figuring out ways to convince me that buying the 5,195-piece Lego Millennium Falcon is a sensible thing to do; however, having the 5,195-piece Lego Millennium is not directly related to your ability to work.

    By the way, I saw our new Lego catalogue open on the table the other day. Does this mean you love Legos more than me?

    😉

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