Definitely a repost, but it fits the season
Can I have everything? Inside and outside the Venn circles!
That would be the symbol\operation called TRUE or TOP or “tautology” which is always true. They’re actually missing quite a few of the weirder ops, including implication and
biconditional\iff\if-and-only-if. (Edit: Actually I think XNOR is also the biconditional. I guess pretend like I said “material implication” and “reverse implication”. Fricken booleans man!)
This cheat sheet needs a cheat sheet. What do the numbers with 3 numbers mean?
I truly have no idea and wish I did, haha. It looks like a shorthand for which operation is being followed, maybe like a group theory thing, but I really don’t know.
I never got why “implies” is called that. How does the phrase “A implies B” relate to the output’s truth table?
I have my own “head canon” to remember it but I’ll share it later, want to hear someone else’s first.
“A → B” is true in any variable assignment where B is true if A is true.
It has always been mostly obvious to me.
“A implies B” means if A is true then B must be true; if A is false, then B can be anything. In other words, the only state not allowed is A being true and B being false. Therefore, the only “hole” is the part of A that doesn’t include B.
I think ‘implies’ asks whether it’s possible that A causes B to be true. In other words, it is false if there is evidence that A does not cause B.
So:
If A is true and B is false, then the result is false, since A could not cause B to be true.
If A and B are both true, then the result is true, since A could cause B.
If A is false and B is true, then the result is true since A could or could not make B true (but another factor could also be making B true)
If A and B are both false we don’t have any evidence about the relationship between A and B, so the result is true.
I don’t know for sure, though. I’m not a mathematician.
Yup, that’s my interpretation too. It just doesn’t sit well with all the other operators.
All the others are phrased as direct questions about the values of A and B:
- A AND B = “Are A and B both true?”
- A OR B = “Are either A or B true, or both?”
- A NAND B = “Is (A AND B) not true?”
- A IMPLIES B = “Is it possible, hypothetically speaking, for it to be the case that A implies B, given the current actual values of A and B?”
You see the issue?
Edit: looking online, some people see it as: “If A is true, take the value of B.” A implies that you should take the value of B. But if A is false, you shouldn’t take the value of B, instead you should use the default value which is inexplicably defined to be
truefor this operation.This is slightly more satisfying but I still don’t like it. The implication (ha) that
trueis the default value for a boolean doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t even feel comfortable with a boolean having a default value, let alone it beingtrueinstead offalsewhich would be more natural.Edit 2: fixed a brain fart for A NAND B
Consider the implication to be some claim, for example, “When it’s raining (A), it’s wet (B)”. The value of the implication tells us whether we should call the claimant a liar or. So in case it’s raining (A = true) and is is not wet (B = false) the claim turns out to be false, so the value of the implication is false.
Now, supposing it is not raining (A = false). It doesn’t matter whether it’s wet or not, we can’t call the claim false because there just isn’t enough information.
It’s about falsifiability (or lack thereof, in case A is never true).
Honestly, this meme just legit helped me understand some of the tools in my CAD software.
Gonna save this A very good visual representation
XNOR is so ambiguously named.
Every time, I’m like: The inverse of XOR? Or the inverse of NOR? Oh, right, NOR is already the inverse of OR, so X-NOR is just OR, so XNOR must be the inverse of XOR.
There’s another one possible: Trick NOT Treat.
NOT Trick AND Treat
how would that be different than Trick NAND treat?
There’s another 10 possible, but if retaining symmetry and excluding the trivial T/F cases, these 6 are the ones to show I guess.





