Comment by jibal

2 hours ago

But a) that's not what his words mean in English and b) that's irrelevant.

"in general" quantifies over all occasions, not over all bugs on one occasion.

To quote my own response:

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Apparently the mathematician author doesn't understand the meaning of his own natural language quantifiers. “it is not in general possible to find bugs by examining the code” means “it is not in general possible to find ANY bugs by examining the code”, not “it is not in general possible to find ALL bugs by examining the code”.

And the first interpretation is relevant but wrong, whereas the second interpretation is true but irrelevant.

P.S. It seems that the author meant to say “it is not in general possible to find a given bug by examining the code”, i.e., "not (for all bugs B it is possible to find B)", which again is true but not relevant.

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