A Pixelated Mind » language

Nonsense and Reference

Pixel — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 23:15:57 +0000

Shockingly obvious realization:

You can have a joke that doesn’t refer to any cultural aspect and you can have a reference that isn’t funny.

Background: I went to a boardgame night a few weeks ago with some friends of a friend. The entire night could be summarized as a series of Internet pop culture references and nerd references. I got a number of them, but many more slipped by me. They seemed to amuse each other, but I mostly just wanted to shout

NEEEEEERRRDDDSS!!!!

Because what they were saying wasn’t amusing in the context. They were only amused because it reminded them of the original amusing quote.

And it occurred to me: If it’s possible to get the reference but not get the joke (or find it funny), then it’s got to be possible to get a joke but not get the reference.

I imagine getting the reference usually adds something to the joke experience, but if a person laughs at something but doesn’t understand that it was actually a reference to another thing– that person shouldn’t be embarrassed. Nonsense and reference are different things.

I think Frege taught us that.

We need new verb tenses, guys

Pixel — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:58:28 +0000

I had this idea a long time ago, wrote a draft, then let it sit until now. Now I stand it up because my friend Iris insists that English would be a terrible language in which to discuss time travel. Why?

“Because you have verb tenses. In China, we just have a verb and specify the time period independently. So instead of ‘I jumped,’ you would say ‘I – in past – jump.’”

I admit that Chinese has us by the short hairs on time travel clarity, but at least in English we can sing words that everybody understands the first time!

In any case, I don’t want to learn another language when time travel becomes not only possible, but commonplace. I’ll just hope that we have new verb tenses for the various new situations that we encounter. Here are my suggestions:

As an example, I’ll use the word ‘engorge’

Who	Recent Past to Distant Past	Distant Past to Recent Past	Past to Future	Future to Past	Near Future to Distant Future	Distant Future to Near Future	Anachronistic Self in Present	Self in Anachronistic Present
Me	(-ud) I engorgud	(-oud) I engorgoud	(-uds) I engorguds	(-usd) I engorgusd	(-os) I engorgos	(-ous) I engorgous	(-ack!) I engorgack!	(-ang!) I’m engorgang!
You	(-yd) You engorgyd	(-eyd) You engorgeyd	(-yds) You engorgyds	(-ysd) You engorgysd	(-es) You engorges	(-eys) You engorgeys	(-yck!) You engorgyck	(-yng!) You’re engorgyng
Us	(-uyd) We engorgyd	(-eud) We engorgeud	(-uds) We engorguds	(-usd) We engorgusd	(-eos) We engorgeos	(-eus) We engorgeus	(-uyck) We engorguyck	(-uyng) We’re engorguyng
Them	(-yd) They engorgyd	(-eyd) They engorgeyd	(-yds) They engorgyds	(-ysd) They engorgysd	(-es) They engorges	(-eys) They engorgeys	(-yck) They engorgyck	(-yng) They’re engorgyng
Your mom	Is so fat,	every time	she sits down	she discovers	the Higgs-Boson.	She’s so fat,	she could plug up	a black hole.

These are all going to sound stupid until they start getting used. So what are you waiting for?

Pregret

Pixel — Fri, 01 May 2009 04:58:24 +0000

I thought I’d invented this word. Oh, well.

Have you ever been writing an answer on a test and you’re fairly certain it’s wrong, but you write it anyway because the alternative answer sounds even more wrong?

That happened to me yesterday.

But more importantly, I just realized that I’d unnecessarily recreated a concept. Last week, when I wrote my Callooh! Callay post, and last year when I invented the concept of an anti-life, I thought I was being bright and making a useful concept. I didn’t stop to wonder if anyone had thought about it before, I just went with it.

But someone had already created it. Specifically, Otto Binder and artist George Papp in issue 68 of Superboy. I’m talking, of course, of bizarro world.

Now, I hate superman for many reasons (some of which Steve will probably point out in the comments). So I didn’t think about bizarro world when I recreated the concept. But now that I realize it is the same thing as anti-world, I feel like a guy on Linux in a world of PC.

My only consolation is that bizarro world is the opposite of the DC universe, not our own universe. (Believe me, the metaphysics of this bother me.) I’m also slightly consoled by the fact that I hate superman and don’t want to be referencing him– however slightly– in even my rarest of posts.

So yeah. I feel a bit cheated and self-conscious, but silly for feeling that way because it’s a stupid comic. (Not that comics are stupid: just Superman and all associated ‘Super’ superheroes.)

And now I have to think of an awkward end to this post/segue to link to this somewhat related post.

Book Smarts vs. Street Smarts [part 1 of 2 of (part 2 of 2)]

Daniel — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:54:08 +0000

80. My circle of friends hasn’t really changed since middle school. This alone makes me want to leave New Mexico.

This is Daniel’s long awaited response,

In a recent conversation, Pixel and I argued whether or not “streets-smarts” was anything beyond a made-up term that stupid people used to make fun of the smart. My friend doesn’t think that street-smarts exist, and originally I might have agreed, until my friend “the walking dictionary” decided to start researching the different types of “smarts.”

I’ll play devil’s advocate; this is my defense for the existence of street-smarts. The problem with street-smarts is that it remains nearly impossible to define with any clarity. Furthermore, the examples about the nature of street-smarts create a sliding slope of puzzling interpretations. The difficultly with language and terms is nothing new. The nature of words have always created serious problems for those who study their logical forms. Take the word “chair” for example. The word chair can be easily misunderstood with the simplest of alterations to its form. A chair is something a person can sit on, it often has four legs, and supports the human figure. Yet when does a chair become a seat, bench, stool, place, or settlement? If the legs were removed would it still be a chair? Does a chair need to be made from wood or metal? The truth is that words can become very complex things, but this is nothing we didn’t already know before.

There have been several objections to language and the troubles their terms create, yet language remains one of the most important developments ever made. My friend Pixel doesn’t believe street-smarts exist, I might have agreed before, but I don’t now. Neither does the chair. The importance of words should not be restricted to rigid definitions, because this would make discussions impossible. A chair is nothing more than a word. Like ‘street-smarts,’ what matters is what the connection implies. When I tell my brother that my friend Carlos can’t do anything without the direction of a book, this criticism will never appear in the dictionary, but my implication suggest some element the two of us can relate. The term street-smarts only exists because it contains something people can use to relate the implications, these words offer the means to meaning, and are only instruments of our ability to share.

Thus, unless Pixel is willing to toss out the rest of the dictionary, street smarts must stay.

(Editor’s note: Part One can be found here.)

Street Smarts vs. Book Smarts (part 1 of 2)

Pixel — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:08:10 +0000

66. Even though I usually get in the 99th percentile in standardized tests (both academic and IQ), I don’t believe in standardized tests. At all. They don’t measure anything except for how well the participant can study for them. Believe me, I’ve boosted my scores by hundreds of points at a time without increasing my intelligence or scholarly aptitude in any way. This, of course, means that No Child Left Behind was based on a false premise. Sorry nation’s youth.

I have a secret. I don’t think street smarts exist. I think people came up with that concept to show that smart people can’t be smart about everything. I think they saw some sort of lack of ‘common sense’ among really smart people and came up with a way of describing this: the titular ‘street smarts’

These come up fairly frequently when I tell people that I’m going to go for my Ph.D. Somehow, this triggers an association and, sure enough, they end up saying some bull like, “well, I think book smarts are okay, but street smarts are what is important.”

To wit: a few days ago, my friend Daniel and his girlfriend Ana started talking to me about street smarts. And, seeing as I was really interested in what the phrase even meant, I started arguing with them (type 2). These were their positions:

Daniel seemed to think that street smarts were a way of analyzing things such that you would think of a quick or easy way of doing something that was unfamiliar. He seemed to believe it was something that could not be learned and had to be innate. He saw no contradiction in a person’s possessing both street smarts and book smarts.
Ana believed that street smarts required a form of physical action and involved a sense of resourcefulness. She felt that people with ‘street smarts’ would generally not be educated and gave the example of orphans or street children that grow up learning to hustle tourists. Though reluctant, eventually she admitted she saw no contradiction in a person’s possessing both street smarts and book smarts.

Both gave the example of a person surviving out in the woods alone using only their wits. They also both gave the example of opening up the hood of a strange car and finding out what was wrong with it.

To me, the differences were irreconcilable. Daniel’s definition seemed to be what I would consider intelligence and Ana’s would be what I would consider learned resourcefulness. Both seemed to have something to do with common sense and no correlative association with book smarts, which we soon defined as general trivia or particular knowledge. This may have been a bit of confirmation bias, but I left unconvinced that the term ‘street smarts’ had any value.

If by ‘street smarts’ one just wishes to contrast ‘book smarts,’ why not just say that knowledge alone does not make someone intelligent? If ‘street smarts’ means common sense, then why not just say that? Ditto for resourcefulness. There seems to be nothing left for ‘street smarts’ to refer to that’s not better expressed with another word.

No, instead I think that street smarts are a subtle way to suggest that there is a high degree of correlation between being intellectual about abstract concepts and lacking wits to survive in the concrete world. Otherwise, why would there even need to be a term for it? And why is it always used in contrast to another made up term: book smarts. It’s not true that intellectualness and everyday wits are mutually exclusive, obviously. But as a direct result of this unspoken assumption, people use the term with abandon. As well they should: I’ve never heard anyone take offense.

Not that I’m saying that people that feel they lack ‘book smarts’ are stupid, far from it! I actually think that knowledge and intelligence have a very low degree of correlation. I don’t assume that somebody doesn’t know how to change their oil simply because they’re a professor, but neither would I assume that from a person that works at In-N-Out Burgers.

Stay tuned for Daniel’s response tomorrow.

p.s. Here’s an idea for a good recipe for a Spinach-Artichoke dip.

p.p.s. Today is the National Day of Reason, so take off your aluminum hats, topple a pyramid scheme, and thank a scientist for life-saving cancer fighting bacon candy.

p.p.p.s. How many common words can you name? I got 44.

(Editor’s note: Part Two can be found here.)

Are you Okay?

Pixel — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:44:11 +0000

21. I have a birthmark on my leg that’s more of a Rorcharch test than anything. I see the ghost of Mickey Mouse. What do you see?

In civilized conversation, there is no more selfish phrase in the English language than “Are you okay?”

I say this in spite of all the seemingly more selfish phrases you can come up with. “I think I’d rather use these $100 bills as toilet paper than give them to orphans” and “Boy, you’ve all gotten so fat while I remain young and vigorous” are both outwardly selfish, but they are guileless and lack any real impact. The person who would say those is not worthy of consideration purely because he would be the type of person to say those things.

“Are you okay?” on the other hand, has often been spoken by well-meaning folk who know that something is not okay, but have come upon a certain situation. You usually ask if someone is okay for the reasons:

As a way to start a conversation with someone who is hurt/sad to show you care/are offering to help.
To make yourself feel better. (“I asked her if she was okay!”)
To inquire whether the person feels there is any permanent damage.

You don’t ever ask it wondering if someone really is okay, because okay is a default position. When a person could go either way, you ask if they are all right. ‘All right’ means stuff is good. ‘Okay’ means that stuff is acceptable or passable. So if somebody is ‘okay,’ it’s never something to be happy about. It’s just a lack of something to be sad about.

Most of the time, I think this phrase should be avoided in favor of what the person actually means at the time:

When a girl is crying in the corner: “Is your crying caused by the lack of strangers offering help for things they don’t understand? Because if it is… you’re in luck!”
When your girlfriend storms in, angry: “If you want to tell me what happened and why you’re mad, I’d love to hear it. Otherwise, I’ll just go get the boxing gloves and a cup, so you can just wail on me that way.”
When someone has fallen while running a marathon: “Can you go on? Do you need anything? I have speed, if that’s what you want.”

My true problem with the phrase is that I worry people just say it because that’s what you’re supposed to say. And, like kissing someone on a dare, it just isn’t the same. Most of the time you know the person is not okay. You just ask it to start a conversation or to ‘show that you care.’ The problem is that the phrase doesn’t do either very well.

And what should the other person even respond? You gave them a yes or no question to an open-ended problem. How selfish is that?

The Recipe for Really?

Pixel — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 06:19:59 +0000

I realized some time ago that most arguments (esp. bad ones) can be deflated with a few well-placed words. If they’re really good words, they can also deflate the person’s ego and get a laugh from nearby bystanders.

I found a way to do this all with one word. The titular “Really?”

However, you can’t just say “Really?” in any old way. You have to say it in the particular proportions I’ve discovered. Like any recipe, you can modify it slightly to suite your own needs, but don’t try to work off book unless you know what you’re doing. Okay?

Here goes:

How to make a Really?:

Ingredients:

Tone of voice with 60 percent inquisitiveness, 10 percent condescension, 5 percent bewilderment, and 25 percent curiosity.
A stare that is simultaneously blank and mock ‘caught-off-guard’
A working neck
Facial expression with 40 percent grimace in embarrassment and 60 percent sympathetic questioning. Imagine you’re a lawyer desperately trying to defend an innocent person who keeps saying stupid things.

Instructions:

Wait until the appropriate moment. Usually this will be shortly after a bad argument escapes the lips of the person you’re debating. For instance, “Buildings can’t fall like that, Bush must have planned 9/11.”
Look at him blankly for precisely one moment. It is important for the silence to stretch for one full moment while you seem like you’re momentarily caught off guard by the argument.
Tilt your head to the right while simultaneously grimace and scrunch your eyebrows together while raising them.
Say “Really?” as if they just embarrassed themselves.
If needed, say “Seriously?” Or “you really believe that?” Each time make your grimace more pained.

While I generally hate rhetoric or sophistry, sometimes its the most effective tool in your arsenal. Try saying this sometime today. It’s surprising how well it works.

What’s a little labeling to you?

Pixel — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 13:06:05 +0000

There are two types of labels that people use to describe themselves: accidental and essential properties (footnote to Aristotle*). I find these fascinating as I peruse ‘about me’ profiles throughout the Internet.

The perceived essential properties always jump out at me, because these are the things that people think are really important about them. I am composed of nothing but accidental properties. So I’m intrigued when I see people define themselves by something at all, let alone so easily.

I’ll give an example:

Mary meets Chris. Mary says, “hi, I’m Mary. I’m a ballet dancer.”

Compare this to:

Christ meets Mary. Chris says, “hey, I’m Chris. I suppose I, too, am a ballet dancer.”

The difference is in both the tone and the content. In the first example, Mary believes that– in order to know who she is as a person– you have to be aware of what ballet dancers are like. In the second example, though Chris is also a ballet dancer, he sees this as something that is non-essential to him as a person. In other words Mary is a ballet dancer, Chris does ballet dancing.

People like Chris attach labels to themselves because they’re so used to labels being bandied about that they immediately resort to labeling themselves as well to facilitate communication. These people are never truly comfortable with them and sometimes even rebel at the idea.

People like Mary wear their labels with pride and perceive the world through those labels. They usually perceive the label as something bigger than them that they can be a part of. They also seek out a community of like-minded people with whom they can speak. If these labels are ever stripped away, they have an existential crisis. For example, if Mary was proud to be Irish and later found out that she was actually Scottish, it might affect her pride at her Irish flag tattoo (it’s on her buttocks).

Now, there’s nothing wrong with labels, per se, they’re just things to watch out for. It’s always dangerous when you begin to identify yourself by something that is outside of your control. Not just because it breaks you down into your component parts, uses, talents, positions and beliefs, but also because it inevitably leads to a flawed assessment of your self worth and place in the world.

Just two cents from a guy who happens to write a blog…

*ref: Plato

What’s a little questioning between friends?

Pixel — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 10:06:18 +0000

This post continues an idea from yesterday’s post.

When I was a kid I was always bad at Truth or Dare. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to share things about myself and it wasn’t because I was afraid of doing silly/stupid/dangerous/embarrassing things. No, I was bad at Truth or Dare because I never wanted to ask anybody any questions or ask them to do any dares. It took me a long time to figure out why I was afraid of this aspect. The answer jumped out at me one year in high school.

I was on the phone with one of my lady friends when she paused for a moment and said,

“have you ever done [insert thing I've never done here*]?”

I, being an ignorant 15 year old, immediately answered “no!” I also said “I think that’s illegal in this state, and I hear the United Nations Human Rights Council† is considering making that a crime against humanity.”

Her response was a quiet,

“oh.”

See, what I didn’t get back then was why she was asking the question. She was asking the question because she was thinking about it. She was thinking about it because it was important to her. It was important to her because her boyfriend had just convinced her to do that.

Had I been a smarter 17 year old, I would have gotten that and been able to go on with the conversation, addressing her fears rather than having her address them later with a revolver.‡ This is not to mention that I would have figured out more about her from her question than was possible from my answer.

In this way, I realize that questions are more revealing than answers. Because with questions, as with labels, you reveal what you think is important. It’s the reason I replaced all of my small talk with existential questions… which, coincidentally, is the reason I do very little small talk.

For more on this topic, read the Little Prince.

* No joke is intended by this punch line.
† I know that back then it was called the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, but I didn’t want to lose the modern day audience reading this that would have been taken out of the story by the seeming anachronism
‡ I’m kidding. It’s just a metaphor. She actually used a Walther P99 semiautomatic pistol.

What’s a little labeling between enemies?

Pixel — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:09:17 +0000

I have an avid interest in labels. I find it interesting to see what words people choose to call each other. I think it defines the person saying it more than the person they’re saying it about.

For instance, a ‘friend’ of mine recently called a girl he knows a ‘ho.’ If you didn’t know this girl, you wouldn’t be justified in concluding she was a ‘ho.’ In fact, this comment would only tell you one thing: my ‘friend’ deemed it appropriate to call her a ‘ho.’

From this piece of evidence all of these conclusions are equally supported:

This friend has Tourette’s, or some other ailment in which he uses inappropriate words.
He wants you to believe she’s a ho or that he believes she’s a ‘ho.’
She really is a ho and he thinks it’s a defining characteristic of hers.
He thinks not being a ‘ho’ is important enough to warrant a comment when someone breaks this norm.

Personally, I think the final conclusion is most often the correct one. At least, that’s what I’m afraid of. In all the conclusions, one could arguably say that you can find out more about the person making the comment than the person the comment is about. That’s one of the reasons I avoid making comments about people or describing people. I worry that some other hyper-analytical person will get more out of what I’m saying than I mean him to.

What labels do you use? And what do they say about you? Do you know? Do you have the courage to find out?

The recipe for byte-sized acquaintances

Pixel — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 22:52:01 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about a previous post of mine that got me into all sorts of trouble with my [label missing]s at the time. If you’ve not read that post, just know that I boiled down all friendship into the following five types:

True friends who know everything about you, who you talk to regularly, and who you could say absolutely anything to. I’m sure they exist. . . somewhere.
Good friends who you spend a lot of time with, you could talk to if you had problems.
Buddies who are a blast to be around, but you would likely not ask them to help you paint a barn if the situation came up.
Friendly Acquaintances who you talk to if you run into them, but don’t do much outside of your usual sphere of influence.
Byte-Sized Acquaintances who you say hi to when you walk by but not much else.

What bothered me about this list was a throw-away line in Fight Club about single-serving friends. A single-serving friend is a person you talk to for a set amount of time (say an airplane flight). What makes them single serving is the fact that you’re forced to be together and you might as well just talk to them and get to know someone.

This led me to a realization about human interaction: people are often forced to be around people they otherwise would not be. It sounds to me like the perfect time to write another list!

(...)
Read the rest of The recipe for byte-sized acquaintances (410 words)

… Why?

Pixel — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 21:50:03 +0000

I was reading this comment on this post when I realized something. First the comment, so that you can get my mindframe:

Terri Says:

Instead of ranting about how all that the Christain believes is false, why don’t you research it for yourself. The sciences and archeology have done a lot of work on this and you might find it interesting. By the way, How do you think the world began? Why?

And Sean‘s response that got me thinking…

…As to why the universe was created, only humans ask that question. Nature doesn’t give a rat’s ass about “why.” Nature just is. That’s why the religious are left scrambling for answers when 150,000 people are killed in a tsunami. And they never come up with anything remotely satisfactory. There is no why, just what and how… Natural disaster, plain and simple…

To phrase it another way: Any ‘why’ implies rationality.

Think about it. If I punch you, you ask me why, and I say “purple glorbed star is sigma stratosphere,” you would assume I was crazy and likely not ask me why again. The same is true for all metaphysical questions.

The problem comes when we attempt to apply this question to something that doesn’t immediately lend itself to rational interpretations. A drunken captain slaloms through the ocean, hits an iceberg, and the ship sinks, killing a hundred sailors and a slow sea lion. Why?

Because. Just because.

If you answered “because some guy didn’t do his job,” then you just committed a logical fallacy. You didn’t answer ‘why,’ but ‘how’ and passed it off as a solution. If you answered “because God deemed it correct,” you implied the ultimate rationality… and a rational cause for that. Which, of course, creates greater problems than I’d care to address.

Why implies rationality. If that is all you learn from me, it will suffice. Just remember that next time you or anyone else asks a ‘why’ question. It’ll save you time and frustration.
…

…

… though if you are interested, I might as well explain the rest of them to you as well.

Any who implies rational actors.
Any what implies substance or coherence.
Any how implies cause and effect.
Any when implies ordering of time.
Any where implies ordering of space.
Any whodunnit implies the butler.

Accepting Vagueness

Pixel — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 09:12:00 +0000

When I was a young lad, I always had a problem with knowing where I stood with regards to my friends. Sometimes they didn’t know I existed (literally), other times they were the ones that were imaginary.

I was always trying to find certainty. I would say, “I don’t care if you love me or hate me, so long as I feel the same and realize it.”

At least that was the general gist of it…

… except for the ‘don’t care’ and ‘hate’ parts.

Anyway, I would always try to force clarity in my relationships. Nothing was worse in my eyes than not knowing how to act when I saw somebody (after all, human interaction isn’t in my nature. I’m a textual beast).

Some time ago, I tried to make something clear that was best left in vagueness. It was responsible for an abrupt shift in a relationship of mine. It was in reconciling the aftermath of the event that I realized what the problem was.

I am a male. As a male, there’s a biological drive towards women (or so I understand, I’ve never felt it myself. More than anything it’s a slow idle or a push). In this society, a man and a woman cannot be ‘just friends‘ without there being some stigma or nudging from their acquaintances. (here’s a fun projekt: hold hands with a friend of yours of the opposite sex for one day. See if you can make it 24 hours without anybody commenting. After that, try groping each other for one day.)

I fell for it. Hook, line, and sinker. I thought “any guy would do what I did,” never realizing that that wasn’t the point. The point isn’t certainty, for if people can hardly be classified, what are the chances that relationships can be?

No, the Platonic Friendship scale and the Erotic Relationship scale are vague measures and should be treated as such. They’re idealized forms of the world. Attempting to force all your relationships into those labels will leave you with far fewer relationships. Trust me, I know.

It was when I realized the disjunction between my innate drive to label people and relationships and the actual state of affairs in the world that I decided to stop worrying and love the vagueness.

I accept vagueness now. I need not know who people are or who I think they are, I need not know what they feel towards me or what I feel towards them, I need not clarify trivial misunderstandings, and I need not ask for more information when it is not provided.

Life is vague

… well, sort of.

The [label missing] Post Ever!

Pixel — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 03:57:00 +0000

I’ve decided to stop labeling my friends. The labels were meant to be general guidelines in the first place. They weren’t supposed to be the be-all and end-all of friendship. It shouldn’t have been the case that I try to fit everyone into a label, but I started doing it and I’m sorry.

Indeed, I’m through labeling anything and everything. No more of this ‘I wonder how he/she/it feels/thinks about me/us/them.’ I should have left that in Middle School, but I didn’t. Indeed, I’m afraid too many of us carry the Middle School immaturity well into the real world.
(no offense to anybody reading this who might still be in Middle School. Though, realistically, you probably know more about what I’m talking about than anybody else.)

So labeling will cease starting now. If I find myself doing it, I’ll slap myself.

My [label missing] Adriano said that doing this might lead to confusion and might make me do less. After all, if we’re not certain where we stand, how do we stand for ourselves?
Better yet, “We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.” -Ambrose Bierce.

The fact that [lm] Adriano has a point makes me sad. Not sad enough to start labeling again, but still. Why must my life and the relationships I have with people fit into silly little human-invented labels when nothing I have ever lived suggests this?

Why must yours?

Yeah, But Still

Pixel — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 08:33:00 +0000

My favorite argument of all time is three words. I’ll give you an example before I explain what it is and why it works.

1: “evironmentalism is stupid. Look, folks, our capitalistic society will come up with a solution for whatever problem we have, as long as environmental regulations and other stupid laws don’t get in the way of the free market.”
2: So you’re saying that it’s stupid to plan ahead for something that is obviously going to be a problem.
1: No.
2: Okay, say you know that you’re running out of food. One day, you find that you just have artichokes and sesame seeds in your entire house. So you put them together and make a makeshift meal. Does that mean that you should never buy food ahead of time because your ingenuity will always save you when you’re up against the wall?
1: You’re framing it wrong.
2: Is there a failure in my analogy?
1: No.
2: Then my analogy is accurate.
1: Yeah…. but still.

(I so wish the stuff in direct quotes wasn’t legitimately somebody’s opinion, but it is)

My roommate calls this the Fuck-It Argument, but I disagree. I think that there are two forms of this particular phrasing.

Form 1: I agree with your argument, your argument follows, but I’m going to continue believing what you’ve proved wrong because I feel intuitively that yours is flawed.

You can tell that it is Form 1 when the conversational topic ends, because anybody that has just been shot out of the water and realizes they can’t save themselves will avoid trudging through and arguing something they can’t justify. Later on, they will think over your objections and one of three things will occur:

They will think up a good counterargument and likely go back and argue with you.
They will forget your objection and probably avoid the topic with you later on (people often take this path with religion, both in and about their particular belief system).
They will give up their position and adopt yours or an amalgam of the twain.

Form 2: I think I understand what you’re saying, but I feel it’s irrelevant and we should get back to the original discussion.

People that use Form 2 always attempt to go right back into the thick of the argument. This doesn’t mean that you didn’t wipe the metaphorical floor with them, for they could have not understood you.

Form 1 is far too common in arguments today. Everytime I argue with someone for any length of time, I expect (and usually find) the argument (or lack thereof) uttered by one of us. I find Form 1 to be necessary on a psychological level. If you were too easily convinced, you might do stupid things, therefore, you maintain your prior beliefs until you can think them over at your leisure.

This is why, as a debater, you must prepare to never convince anybody whilst you argue with them. Your goal should be to present your side as the only logical choice and hope they end up realizing this in the near future.

Unfortunately, it’s also probable that they won’t tell you if they’ve changed positions. Humans are prideful like that.

A Pixelated Mind » language

Nonsense and Reference

NEEEEEERRRDDDSS!!!!

We need new verb tenses, guys

Who

Recent Past to Distant Past

Distant Past to Recent Past

Past to Future

Future to Past

Near Future to Distant Future

Distant Future to Near Future

Anachronistic Self in Present

Self in Anachronistic Present

(-ud) I engorgud

(-oud) I engorgoud

(-uds) I engorguds

(-usd) I engorgusd

(-os) I engorgos

(-ous) I engorgous

(-ack!) I engorgack!

(-ang!) I’m engorgang!

(-yd) You engorgyd

(-eyd) You engorgeyd

(-yds) You engorgyds

(-ysd) You engorgysd

(-es) You engorges

(-eys) You engorgeys

(-yck!) You engorgyck

(-yng!) You’re engorgyng

(-uyd) We engorgyd

(-eud) We engorgeud

(-uds) We engorguds

(-usd) We engorgusd

(-eos) We engorgeos

(-eus) We engorgeus

(-uyck) We engorguyck

(-uyng) We’re engorguyng

(-yd) They engorgyd

(-eyd) They engorgeyd

(-yds) They engorgyds

(-ysd) They engorgysd

(-es) They engorges

(-eys) They engorgeys

(-yck) They engorgyck

(-yng) They’re engorgyng

Is so fat,

every time

she sits down

she discovers

the Higgs-Boson.

She’s so fat,

she could plug up

a black hole.

Pregret

Book Smarts vs. Street Smarts [part 1 of 2 of (part 2 of 2)]

Street Smarts vs. Book Smarts (part 1 of 2)

Are you Okay?

The Recipe for Really?

How to make a Really?:

Ingredients:

Instructions:

What’s a little labeling to you?

What’s a little questioning between friends?

What’s a little labeling between enemies?

The recipe for byte-sized acquaintances

… Why?

Accepting Vagueness

The [label missing] Post Ever!

Yeah, But Still

(-ud)
I engorgud

(-oud)
I engorgoud

(-uds)
I engorguds

(-usd)
I engorgusd

(-os)
I engorgos

(-ous)
I engorgous

(-ack!)
I engorgack!

(-ang!)
I’m engorgang!

(-yd)
You engorgyd

(-eyd)
You engorgeyd

(-yds)
You engorgyds

(-ysd)
You engorgysd

(-es)
You engorges

(-eys)
You engorgeys

(-yck!)
You engorgyck

(-yng!)
You’re engorgyng

(-uyd)
We engorgyd

(-eud)
We engorgeud

(-uds)
We engorguds

(-usd)
We engorgusd

(-eos)
We engorgeos

(-eus)
We engorgeus

(-uyck)
We engorguyck

(-uyng)
We’re engorguyng

(-yd)
They engorgyd

(-eyd)
They engorgeyd

(-yds)
They engorgyds

(-ysd)
They engorgysd

(-es)
They engorges

(-eys)
They engorgeys

(-yck)
They engorgyck

(-yng)
They’re engorgyng