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if you don't even know what youre arguing about, then why are you arguing? thats the point of semantics its also fun to argue semantics when you dont actually have a point of disagreement, which is what this thread is for you can also post about pendantry itt 
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Dec 8, 2023 03:53
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hmm i think i'd rather talk about pedantry
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Dec 8, 2023 04:36
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etiology is pretty cool too op
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Dec 8, 2023 04:37
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wait, I’m thinking of a different word
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Dec 8, 2023 04:38
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Silver Alicorn posted:etiology is pretty cool too op what is it
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Dec 8, 2023 04:49
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apparently it's the study of the causes of things I was trying to think of the intentional selection of vocabulary to avoid unwanted semantics idk. its on the tip of my tongue
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Dec 8, 2023 04:56
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ontology. it's ontology. yeah not exactly what I thought I was thinking of but that's the word
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Dec 8, 2023 04:59
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gonna keep a close eye on this thread
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Dec 8, 2023 05:02
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most discussions about the meaning of words can be derailed for a good while by bringing up prescriptivism vs descriptivism and aligning yourself with the latter, and forcing everyone to define words from first principles for the current context. All disagreements are purely due to misunderstandings based on poor word definitions, and through social sense making we can temporarily find agreement.
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Dec 8, 2023 05:23
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MononcQc posted:most discussions about the meaning of words can be derailed for a good while by bringing up prescriptivism vs descriptivism and aligning yourself with the latter, and forcing everyone to define words from first principles for the current context. All disagreements are purely due to misunderstandings based on poor word definitions, and through social sense making we can temporarily find agreement. u dont think people can come to different conclusions based on the same facts?
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Dec 8, 2023 05:32
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fart simpson posted:u dont think people can come to different conclusions based on the same facts? you’ll have to define what exactly you mean by facts here; are we talking observable phenomena, or their interpretation? because sure you could imagine vastly different reactions to the same phenomena but if your definition of fact includes interpretation, then you are starting off from a hard to validate sequence, but also it sounds much different to ask “can people come to different conclusions from interpreting facts the same” of course you can argue that context creates a distinction in interpretation so the idea of sameness here relies on some temporal factor or an arbitrary grouping of events into some categories or labels and well, is that also shared?
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Dec 8, 2023 05:37
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lol hmm elon musk has made me hate the phrase "from first principles"
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Dec 8, 2023 05:40
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MononcQc posted:you’ll have to define what exactly you mean by facts here; are we talking observable phenomena, or their interpretation? well, i mean you said quote:All disagreements are purely due to misunderstandings based on poor word definitions and i dont understand why youd think that. surely we can understand each others words but have different goals and interests and still end up disagreeing. example: your employer prefers to pay you as little money as possible and you prefer to earn as much money as possible. theres gonna be a material disagreement there that doesnt seem like it has anything to do with misunderstandings or definitions, its an inherently antagonistic relationship where each side has mutually competing interests
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Dec 8, 2023 05:41
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MononcQc posted:you’ll have to define what exactly you mean by facts here; are we talking observable phenomena, or their interpretation? your understanding of a fact must include some interpretation, as the fact only becomes what it is in the context of everything else you know. anyway semantics is easy, you just look at how people are using the word in question. Doing a bunch of word games and thought experiments will normally just take you further from understanding
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Dec 8, 2023 08:18
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distortion park posted:your understanding of a fact must include some interpretation, as the fact only becomes what it is in the context of everything else you know. i think your right but you don’t even need to go that far. you can have disagreements that don’t depend on misunderstanding or interpretation of facts, simply through conflicting interests. if you asked a slave if he should be freed he’s given a different answer than the master and it isn’t dependent on either one of them misunderstanding or misinterpreting anything, as an obvious example but i think that should hold true even for much less extreme examples
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Dec 8, 2023 08:22
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fart simpson posted:i think your right but you don’t even need to go that far. you can have disagreements that don’t depend on misunderstanding or interpretation of facts, simply through conflicting interests. if you asked a slave if he should be freed he’s given a different answer than the master and it isn’t dependent on either one of them misunderstanding or misinterpreting anything, as an obvious example agreed, you can do more with words than just talk about facts and the words' meanings
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Dec 8, 2023 08:36
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Dec 8, 2023 08:46
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descriptivism ftw tbh
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Dec 8, 2023 10:37
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look, I took an outrageous stance to get the discussion going and I don't truly believe this, but let's see if we can argue our way out of a paper bag, because that's what this semantics and pedantry is for. distortion park posted:your understanding of a fact must include some interpretation, as the fact only becomes what it is in the context of everything else you know. Exactly, so since the interpretation is a fundamental part of the understanding of events, and that we have the ability to reinterpret past events based on new contextual cues that has been enriched by a conversation, we should in theory and to a large practical extent have the ability to properly re-define concepts and re-align people's contexts until they can match agreed-upon semantics. The deeper question is therefore not whether we can or can't have disagreement, but whether we're willing to take the time to reconstruct a shared context and compact that would let us in fact align on a common ground that in turn yields an agreeable solution. distortion park posted:anyway semantics is easy, you just look at how people are using the word in question. Doing a bunch of word games and thought experiments will normally just take you further from understanding Oh but this has some limits, generally known as the indeterminacy of translation, which states that ultimately, all translation ends up being behavioral because there is an inability to know, based on the utterances, what the initial meaning was; you mostly have only the ability to repeatedly observe it to draw a context that lets you approximate the meaning. So of course here you're being fast and loose, but "just look at how people are using that word in question" and "doing a bunch of word games and thoughts experiments" are also part of the proper experiment design that lets you figure out if your observations are grounded properly. fart simpson posted:well, i mean you said I'll refer here again to my prior point in this very post about the issue being one of encoding and decoding, and therefore of building the common ground for these to align better. The issue we're going to run into sooner or later are whether the context includes values and upbringing (it most likely does), and therefore whether part of accurate-enough encoding and decoding of words for meaning has the ability to include this construction of the self into its definition. If so, you will have a hard time drawing a clear-cut boundary between "the word choice was bad" and "the idea behind the word choice was a consequence of past experience" and bringing clarification may necessarily involve re-examining people's own stances. As such, one could argue that "paying you as little money as possible" will imply a re-examination of what we mean by "paying" (and the concepts behind the exchanges of goods and services), the idea of "little", of "possible", and also of "money." One may very well find that both sides of the argument, given the proper context both agree on what money and paying means, but that "as little as possible" is a point of contention that may be redefined and agreed upon with sufficient discussion to reinterpret the events properly.
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Dec 8, 2023 17:39
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thank god fishmech isn't around anymore, I feel like I'm cosplaying them
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Dec 8, 2023 17:41
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mods please make mononcqc and sagebrush thread IKs
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Dec 8, 2023 18:17
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quote:No no you see the rules of language are purely arbitrary stodgy ivory-tower crap we doesn't have to worried aboard because everytime history on you rebendible sausage mountain
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Dec 8, 2023 19:27
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rotor posted:mods please make post hole digger thread IK, of this thread, and all of the other threads
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Dec 8, 2023 19:45
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MononcQc posted:look, I took an outrageous stance to get the discussion going and I don't truly believe this, but let's see if we can argue our way out of a paper bag, because that's what this semantics and pedantry is for. more of a comment than a question, but it does seem as though semantics and pedantry are actually wonderful if you want to confine arguments into ever-smaller and less productive paper bags. Like, a great stance to take if your language game is to nominally agree to play some larger language game, but your actual aim is to frustrate all other players.
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Dec 8, 2023 19:45
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YOSPOS > the pedantry thread: more of a comment than a question, but
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Dec 8, 2023 20:02
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Beeftweeter posted:lol hmm elon musk has made me hate the phrase "from first principles" I don’t really know what it means when people say this I have been intrigued to find out
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Dec 8, 2023 20:35
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rotor posted:mods please make mononcqc and sagebrush thread IKs
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Dec 8, 2023 20:36
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they mean figuring it out themselves without listening to experts who are in the pocket of big government
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Dec 8, 2023 20:36
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MononcQc posted:most discussions about the meaning of words can be derailed for a good while by bringing up prescriptivism vs descriptivism and aligning yourself with the latter, and forcing everyone to define words from first principles for the current context. All disagreements are purely due to misunderstandings based on poor word definitions, and through social sense making we can temporarily find agreement. are landlords really lords of the land
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Dec 8, 2023 20:37
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echinopsis posted:I don’t really know what it means when people say this everyone who's done what you want to do before is a loving idiot and can't be trusted and since you're so much smarter than everyone else (and especially them) you're going to start from scratch for everything and invent a better wheel that sometimes catches on fire
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Dec 8, 2023 20:38
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they call it home work but you’re not working on your home???
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Dec 8, 2023 21:00
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something I find amusing is how many English expressions are overstatement or understatement. like if you say “that’s not bad” you’re not trying to be neutral, you’re actually saying it’s pretty good. I think of examples all the time but that’s the main one that comes to mind right now
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Dec 8, 2023 21:03
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echinopsis posted:are landlords really lords of the land and if so is there a maritime equivalent?
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Dec 8, 2023 21:05
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rotor posted:and if so is there a maritime equivalent? goldfringer - superman
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Dec 8, 2023 21:08
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Beeftweeter posted:lol hmm elon musk has made me hate the phrase "from first principles" echinopsis posted:I don’t really know what it means when people say this in an educational context, it can certainly mean something like "I intend to explain this topic starting with a thorough treatment of the concepts upon which it rests; if my audience is prepared for the treatment of the foundational topics, they will come away with a strong, primary grasp on my main topic." in the life of a physics student (possibly some math or engineering students) it can mean something like "I can't for the life of me remember all of the possible equations that I might need to use, but I do remember enough of the *derivations* of those equations that, when I need them on an exam, I can re-derive them from fundamental laws and domain-specific constraints or assumptions." in a professional STEM problem solving context, it means something sort of like the above, but maybe more like "I don't have the typical background knowledge of other people working in this field, but I'm going to see if I can use multiple elements of my background knowledge and my synthetic and/or analytical skills to put together an understanding possibly as good, perhaps with different nuances, from others who learned this stuff in school or early in their professional life. " for anything related to politics, society, etc as used by musk it's essentially screaming "I THINK I'M THE SPECIALEST EPISTEMIC TRESPASSER! I KNOW I'M NOT AN EXPERT AND THAT'S GREAT BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW EXPERTS ARE CORRUPT, DECEITFUL, DEVIOUS, AND STUPID" As someone who enjoyed hearing it in an educational context and employed the strategies as a physics student and a STEM worker, I am dismayed that Elon Musk uses it to describe his "theories" about politics etc. Silver Alicorn posted:they mean figuring it out themselves without listening to experts who are in the pocket of big government  Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:everyone who's done what you want to do before is a loving idiot and can't be trusted and since you're so much smarter than everyone else (and especially them) you're going to start from scratch for everything and invent a better wheel that sometimes catches on fire
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Dec 8, 2023 21:38
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paging sagebrush, requesting reflections on the use of the phrase, "from first principles"
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Dec 8, 2023 21:45
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prisoner of waffles posted:paging sagebrush, requesting reflections on the use of the phrase, "from first principles" that marble machine guy who stans musk said it a lot before he failed at building a new marble machine
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Dec 8, 2023 21:49
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MononcQc posted:
I'm being a bit less fast and loose Vs my actual beliefs than you (generously!) suppose I think. Our ordinary usages of "understand" etc are perfectly at ease with the technical logical issues about our inability to achieve absolute certainty of others meaning. And in order to achieve what understanding and knowledge I might claim in almost any context I haven't done any experiments (or at least not proper ones) or generally considered the grounding of my understanding. I'd agree that thought experiments where I put myself or another in an ordinary situation and imagine how we might speak about it can be useful, but when they take words outside their ordinary contexts often create more problems than they solve (see the Chinese Room Argument or most disputes about the "nature of truth"). Imo. distortion park fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Dec 8, 2023 |
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Dec 8, 2023 22:17
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prisoner of waffles posted:in an educational context, it can certainly mean something like from first principles I can say thankyou and I appreciate this post
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Dec 8, 2023 22:50
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Silver Alicorn posted:something I find amusing is how many English expressions are overstatement or understatement. like if you say “that’s not bad” you’re not trying to be neutral, you’re actually saying it’s pretty good. I think of examples all the time but that’s the main one that comes to mind right now there’s a meme about American idioms vs English vs Germans (iirc?) that lays out the various levels of enthusiasm where “that’s okay” is earth shattering endorsement from one but extremely negative from the other
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Dec 9, 2023 00:07
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