Logical nonsense

Yesterday, in the course of reference 1, otherwise about a visit to Battersea Park, I reported briefly on a conversation with Gemini about what appeared to be a Masonic badge or jewel engraved onto the front windows of a public house.

Consulting my copy of the 1947 Constitutions of the United Grand Lodge of England - sourced second-hand, as I recall, from the pannier market at Tavistock - I had thought that the nearest thing was the jewel of the Deputy Grand Master. Not that it was very near: the jewel turned up by Bing on eBay included above is much more the thing.

In the course of this conversation with Gemni, I had finger trouble and submitted an unfinished question, The wrong question and the subsequent right question being snapped above, left and right respectively.

Gemini got a bit carried away on the wrong question and this morning I associated to a theorem from logic according to which if we have it that both P and not-P are true, where P is some proposition, then I can prove anything. Or glossing, the whole system is a nonsense. A relevant snap from page 37 of reference 2, particularly the text after the proof of Corollary 1.15, is snapped above.

I wondered whether there is some analogy here with the way that Gemini, if you feed him duff information is a bit apt to go off the rails, putting, as he does, much weight on user input.

Some details

On the wrong question, Gemini homes in on the phrase 'front V', seeming to get confused between the upside down 'V' formed by the compasses and the right way up one formed by the square.

He talks of a blazing sun, while the DGM jewel in the Constitutions features a pentangle, something that New Age types as well as Masons are keen on. There is something like a blazing sun for the GM jewel, but it is described as an eye within a triangle, both irradiated. I had opted for DGM on the grounds that we had a square (of the DGM jewel) rather than an arc (of the GM jewel); a more dominating feature than the design in the middle.

There was some confusion, certainly in my mind, about quadrants and arcs. A graduated quadrant is the name for an instrument, seemingly now mainly used in the aeronautical world, and the arc part is very like what one gets in place of the DGM square on the GM jewel. More evidence of confusion on Gemini's part between the two; more evidence of his difficulties with images generally, being very reliant on verbal descriptions of same.

His phrase 'the way the engraving meets the "V" of the square depends entirely on whether the jewel...' is a bit confusing. I think what he is talking about is whether the points of the compasses just touch the square, or cross over, as in the jewel snapped above.

There is a switch from 'blazing sun' to 'sun in splendor'. Are these two more or less heraldic terms synonyms?

On the right question he does rather better, although some of the difficulties mentioned above are carried over.

Other matters

Gemini is pretty good at making sense of my sometimes complicated input, so to that extent much more user friendly than a conventional search engine where you sometimes have to work at your search term, maybe taking several bites at it. But he is not so good at detecting when you have made a mistake. He did not appear to notice that something was wrong with my first attempt, choosing instead to make the best of what he had got. As it happened, he could bite on the stray 'V'.

I dare say that in some lodges there is unseemly display, in that some brothers go in for very expensively made jewels., with the GM jewel snapped above looking relatively cheap - unless, of course, it is made of solid gold.

Not very like the image in the Constitutions, but one can see how the confusion with eyes might have arisen, also the confusion of the GM eye with the DGM pentagram.

The interior of the pannier market at Tavistock.

An aerial view of same, with the indoor hall in the middle. The outer ring of regular shops once included at least one proper butcher, a butcher where I once bought a very decent bit of top rib of beef, albeit off the bone, it having been boned, as luck would have it, minutes before I arrived. A butcher which is now a café, probably a touch New Age and orgo.. Maybe complete with pentangles - in any event I would be pretty confident that you could buy such a thing somewhere nearby. Both snaps lifted from Alamy of reference 4.

Conclusions

On reflection, I think my association to the rules of logic is off the point. What we have here is Gemini having trouble with pictures. Getting a bit carried away when answering the wrong question is not particular significant.

Work in progress.

PS 1: I associated later this morning to a phrase which I think came from IT in the early 1980s: 'rubbish in, rubbish out'.

PS 2: and to a story about Bertrand Russell, snapped above. A story which might be called an instance of  'ex falso quodlibet', for which see reference 3. Turned up by Bing without any bother at all.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/battersea.html.

Reference 2: Introduction to mathematical logic - Elliott Mendelson - 1964.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion.

Reference 4: https://www.alamy.com/.

Group search key: aisk.