[ExI] Free will was: Everett worlds

[John Clark]

On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 4:10 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Do you think, John, that kids cannot define the words they use?
>

I couldn't. I remember as a kid having great difficulty providing a
definition to common words that would satisfy my English teacher even
though I used those words many times a day. I kept giving her instances of
the word in use and she kept saying those were just examples and she wanted
definitions.

> I am peculiar, as we all know.
>

Yes, that must be hard, thank goodness there's nothing strange about me.
Mr.Normal they call me, for some reason they're always laughing when they
say that, I'm not sure why but I guess they're just in a joyous mood.

 > I spent a good deal of my life, and still a part of it, with my nose in
> a dictionary, preferably a big one - right now I have three large tomes of
> the OED
>

The trouble is every single one of the definitions in the OED is made of
words, and every one of those words have definitions that are also in the
OED, and every one of those definitions are also made of words.... and
round and round it goes. The only reason language is not just circular
nonsense is because of physical examples not definitions. A parent points
to a tall thing with lots of green stuff on top and says "tree", and
children get the idea.

John K Clark
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