[ExI] addiction

[BillK]

On Sat, 9 Apr 2022 at 23:52, Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> Yeah.  I see that words fail in almost every attempt I make to convey an idea.  I now believe words are not finite and tangible mental objects... they're clouds of probabilty that we agree (more or less) have good-enough central tendency to be usable to direct each other's attention. In a social context "conversational" use of words does not require the type of definition you are trying to apply.  I suspect even if you did pursue this five nines precision of "willpower" we could as easily reject your starting premise and that completely undermines the expressive power of your model. I am often challenged for how I react to meaning I have for words that weren't actually being sent/intended by the speaker. Ex: people say "mad" when they mean "angry" - do I respond to what is said or what was meant?  tl;dr "words are hard"
>
> And this oldie but goodie:
> https://i.redd.it/f9vdbp4pl3721.jpg
> _______________________________________________


This reminds me of Laynes' Law.
Coined by software developer Layne Thomas, Layne's law of debate states that:
A) every debate is over the definition of a word,
B) every debate eventually degenerates into debating the definition of
a word, or
C) once a debate degenerates into debating the definition of a word,
the debate is debatably over.
A notable example of this law may be the arguments over the definition
of "assault weapon" in the gun control debate.
------------

BillK