Classic NYC Story

Uncle: What I’m saying is that these kids are smart kids, and if you’re smart, you should study math and the hard sciences in school.
Mother: I didn’t study hard sciences in school. Are you saying I’m not smart?
Uncle: I didn’t say that.
Mother: Yes you did! You’re saying I’m not smart. That’s what you just said.
Uncle: You’re twisting my words.
Mother: [Husband]! Your brother just said I wasn’t smart! Aren’t you going to defend me?
Father: Consider yourself defended.
Sister: Listen you… Uncle! You don’t get to say that my mother isn’t smart!
Mother: At least somebody is defending me!
Uncle: I didn’t say your mother was not smart.
Sister: Actually, though, in defense of Uncle…
Mother: Don’t defend him!
Sister: No, no, in defense of Uncle, he didn’t say you weren’t smart, because the converse of a conditional statement is not a logical conclusion.
Me: What are you talking about?
Sister: “If p then q” doesn’t imply “if q then p.”
Me: But wait, what is p and what is q? The statement was “If you’re smart you’ll study hard sciences,” right? So p is “you’re smart” and q is “you’ll study hard sciences,” right?
Sister: Yeah, but what I’m saying is–
Me: No, wait. The contrapositive is a logical conclusion of a conditional.
Sister: Yeah, but the converse is not.
Me: No, but the contrapositive, so flip those statements and negate them to get the contrapositive and you get “if not q then not p” which would be “If you don’t study hard sciences then you’re not smart.”
Uncle: That’s not what I said!
Me: That is what you said.
Girlfriend: Did we just take it back to sequential?
Me: I know what I’m talking about; I used to tutor this subject.
Sister: I revoke my defense of you, Uncle.
Me: You’ve just been owned by a music major. How do you feel about that?

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