So Long, and Thanks for All the Premises
- Matthew Blackwood
- Jun 14
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 15
An Illustrated Survival Guide for People Reckless Enough to Use Logic
Arthur had worked as an insurance agent for 15 years and 245 days, the last 15 years and 244 days of which were spent building up the courage to resign via motivational quotes, occasional gym visits, and a small number of socially questionable coping strategies.
From long experience, he knew that all agents must carry an identification card.
An identification card typically contained an unflattering photograph of its owner, several administrative inconsistencies, and a material that, upon closer inspection, appeared to be negotiating better working conditions with the factory that produced it.
The system later classified this negotiation attempt as futile.
An audit established the following:
All agents must carry an identification card.
Arthur is an agent.
The Department of Logical Redundancy refers to such statements as seeds.
⊱ § ⊰
When Arthur’s brain was tasked with applying formal logic rules, it became temporarily unavailable for comment.
After a short walk—during which he visited four pubs, consumed three liters of beer, and experienced two socially awkward incidents—it entered a low-power mode.
This was officially classified as an improvement.
Deduction was now possible.
From the statements:
All agents must carry an identification card.
and:
Arthur is an agent.
it follows that:
Arthur must carry an identification card.
This process is known as deduction.
Under normal circumstances, it is referred to as classical, which is an academic term meaning “it worked long enough for people to stop questioning it.”
⊱ § ⊰
The situation proceeded toward formal validity.
Arthur used paper, ink, and the thermodynamically ambitious part of his brain to construct a proof.
The result appeared convincing, though it was later classified as inefficient.
After two rounds of negotiation and one discreet exchange involving a replica of Sherlock Holmes’ pipe, the Department of Logical Accessibility provided the following reformulation:
All A have property B.
X is A.
Therefore X has property B.
Formally:
∀x (Agent(x) → IDCard(x))
Agent(Arthur)
∴ IDCard(Arthur)
In other words:
All agents have identification cards, and Arthur is an agent, therefore Arthur has an identification card.
This step was logically valid, which was notable given that Arthur had performed very few logically valid actions in his life, aside from acquiring a philosophical towel, a melancholic coffee machine, and emotionally armoured doors.
⊱ § ⊰
A crucial step followed, often omitted by less cautious practitioners: error detection.
Arthur referred to his method as “landmine detection through walking.”
Human walking.
For safety reasons, the editorial board recommended a simpler approach involving paper and pencil—tools that appear harmless until someone uses them to plan a gold heist from Fort Knox.
The question was:
Was any invalid logical step used?
Consider the following claim:
Arthur has an identification card.
Therefore Arthur is an agent.
Formally:
IDCard(Arthur)
∴ Agent(Arthur)
This is invalid.
Identification cards may also belong to:
employees,
security personnel,
visitors,
and, in some organizations, people who have long since forgotten why they were given one.
From:
Agent → ID card
one cannot infer:
ID card → Agent
Such a branch is classified as an invalid branch, a label applied to a surprisingly large number of human decisions.
⊱ § ⊰
The next step involved detecting contradictions through what is formally known as “heroic inconsistency resolution.”
Consider the new statement:
Arthur never received an identification card.
Now we have:
Arthur is an agent.
All agents must carry an identification card.
Arthur never received an identification card.
A conflict emerges.
Possible explanations include:
one of the axioms is incorrect,
the rule allows exceptions,
information about Arthur is incomplete,
“received” and “possesses” are not identical concepts.
The contradiction must be resolved before a conclusion can be accepted.
Arthur reconsidered the situation.
The situation reconsidered Arthur.
⊱ § ⊰
After resolution by the Supreme Probability Office for Premise Verification, the following was confirmed:
All agents must carry an identification card.
Arthur was an agent.
No unresolved contradictions remain.
From this follows the bureaucratically elegant conclusion:
Arthur possesses an identification card.
Inference Tree Construction was complete.
Arthur was not.
Civilization, however, remained operational.
For now.
— Blackwood. Matthew Blackwood.
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