[ExI] Bad news for US customers of Intrade

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Sun, Dec 2, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Omar Rahman <rahmans at me.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 2012-12-02, at 1:00 PM, extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org wrote:
>
> <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> you demand that bureaucrats
>
> have to control individual securities trades rather than letting
>
> market participants make their own decisions.
>
>
> As a 'native speaker' who has taught English as a second language I would
> say that:
>
> - 'the demand that (someone) has to control' does portray Adrian's position
> as an absolute or extreme position

### I'd say that "demand" here does not refer to how absolute the
level of control we are talking about, but rather how consistent
Adrian's preference for more government control is.

More importantly, reasonable persons can have doubts about the nuances
of a single sentence's meaning - which is why it is important to
consider the context, where restatements clarify the position.
-----------

> - the X 'rather than' Y doesn't mean that if X is an absolute the
> alternative Y must also be an absolute, but simply shows your preference to
> a second alternative (and it should not be inferred that this implies that
> there are only 2 alternatives)
>
> Eg. I would rather eat the absolute best ever steak than some bug. (Clearly
> there are more things to eat than bugs and steak.)

### Exactly - as you note, "rather" is not an absolute qualifier.
Also, I clearly stated in another part of this thread that I accuse
Adrian of wanting *more* government control, not absolute control
(e.g. the paragraph where I talk about bridges on the road to
serfdom).

Of course, Adrian knew what I meant, if he read my posts.

Rafal