Thread: Random deep questions I thought up

Originally Posted by Serkat

Whoever said that words have to have opposites? What's the opposite of a telephone? What's the opposite of 27?

Also, no is not the opposite of maybe. Maybe means "There is a chance of it happening" just as it means "There is a chance of it not happening", so saying that no is its opposite isn't justified.

One possible opposite of maybe would be 'certainly'.

Be aware that for there to be an opposite there has to be a mirror axis. For maybe, we could take the axis "certainty". "maybe" would be uncertain, and its opposite would be certainly. The mirror axis is arbitrary which is why semantic opposites are just mental masturbation. Words don't naturally come in pairs.

These are exactly the kind of response I was looking for. Make me look at it differently. I should clarify I wasn't so much asking for the opposite of the word as much as the concept. Still, your right, do things inherently have an opposite? Is the opposite of a telephone, no telephone? Or a telephone made of antimatter? I still feel the opposite of the concept maybe could be no, but it could be yes as well I think now. If you take your certainty axis, yes and no are absolutes, maybe and maybe not are not. Yes and no have certainty values of 100%, while maybe has some value less than that. On a graph it might be a parabola, with yes and no being the "ends" at 100% and all points along the arc being maybe's. That's kind of a weak model actually, but it's all I can think of at the moment.

Edit: actually the parabola could work. I dismissed it because it really models that there is no opposite of maybe, as maybe would have an infinite number of points along that parabola between the absolutes yes and no. The last thought I have is that maybe is possibly it's own opposite. Yes and no, the absolute values are opposites yet the same, they are both 100% certain, but one is positive and the other negative. If maybe is "some degree of certainty" the best you could quantify it's "opposite" which is a poorly chosen word on my part I feel now, is "some other degree of certainty". So at best maybe is the opposite of yes, no and itself. As well as being equal to all those things.

Edit: One last thing, I realize now I was trying to see a VARIABLE in terms of CONSTANTS. The constants yes and no, their values cannot change. The variable maybe obviously can. So of course it stands to reason that maybe can be equal to yes and no, as well as any value in between. I think that pretty much does this one?