[ExI] addiction

[William Flynn Wallace]

BillK, I have read that a general semanticist has estimated that in
ordinary conversation only about 1/3 of what is said actually communicates
accurately to the other person.  (Less if it is between a man and a woman -
then it can fall to near zero ��)  Primarily, I reckon, because people have
different definitions of the concepts stemming from different life
experiences.   Now imagine the difficulty of the UN translators, rendering
in English on the go what is being said in some other language, whose
citizens have at times very different cultures, attitudes, religions, and
so on.  I read of a story from France in which
TV contestants are required to tell what another person is saying - in
French. And they often can't.   bill w

On Sat, Apr 9, 2022 at 6:21 PM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20220409/c0670b55/attachment-0001.htm>