Re: What is YOUR view?

On 01/05/2024 13:16, jillery wrote:

On Tue, 30 Apr 2024 12:02:16 +0200, Arkalen <arkalen@proton.me> wrote:
 

On 30/04/2024 06:56, jillery wrote:

On Wed, 24 Apr 2024 20:11:08 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
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On Wed, 24 Apr 2024 16:02:12 +0200
Arkalen <arkalen@proton.me> wrote:
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On 24/04/2024 15:37, Arkalen wrote:

On 24/04/2024 14:57, jillery wrote:

On Mon, 22 Apr 2024 09:59:22 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<admin@127.0.0.1> trolled:
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On Mon, 22 Apr 2024 03:11:51 -0400
jillery <69jpil69@gmail.com> wrote:
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On Sun, 21 Apr 2024 20:45:17 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
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On Sun, 21 Apr 2024 14:38:23 -0400
JTEM <jtem01@gmail.com> wrote:
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Is this really better than just taking your meds?
>

I think there's some kind of award here for posts that make people
laugh;
I commend JTEM's implication that it's others who need meds.

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So yet another JTEM fan. No surprise here.
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You misunderstand.

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<Kerr-Mudd's explanation missing here>
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Now that you and your bedfellows have exercised your inner trolls,
perhaps you would take the time to specify what I have misunderstood.
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>
Athel Cornish-Bowden said that JTEM implying that others (than JTEM)
need meds made Athel Cornish-Bowden laugh, i.e. that JTEM needs meds in
a way that is so obvious that the suggestion the opposite might be true
is humorous. "Needing meds" in this context is clearly presented as a
derogatory accusation of irrationality, both in JTEM's usage and Athel
Cornish-Bowden's, making it extremely unlikely that ACB be a JTEM fan.
So your apparent claim that he is a JTEM fan suggests a misunderstanding
involving any aspect of the above.

>
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Alternate explanation:  Kerr-Mudd explicilty "commends" JTEM on his
implication that jillery needs meds (read it again).
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>
That alternate explanation is, I guess, just about plausible enough to
justify a misunderstanding by a defensive reader but it *would* be a
misunderstanding as it fails on Grice's maxim of quantity. If Kerr-Mudd
had wished to commend JTEM for the implication jillery needs meds he
would have said "jillery". "It's others" includes jillery but also a
much larger group, and is the term that would be used when that larger
group is being referenced. The "*it's* others" as opposed to just
"others" highlights that "others need meds" is being opposed to the
counterfactual "not-others[=JTEM] needs meds". The maxim of relevance
suggests that this counterfactual is indeed what the sentence is hinting at.

  There's more than one way to interpret Grice's maxim of relevance
here; "it's others" is but a continuation of Kerr-Mudd's paraphrase of
JTEM's implication, and so references JTEM's original claim about me
only, and makes no reference to any imagined "larger group".
 

Not really. Grice's maxims (or the cooperative principle) is the notion that sentences should be interpreted based on the assumption that the speaker was trying to convey a specific meaning that they expected the listener to understand; the maxims are a tentative taxonomy of "rules" in the choices speakers make following from that that can be used to resolve apparent ambiguities or violated for humorous effect.
In this case I brought up the maxim of quantity because I agreed with you that "others" *could* refer to you, but also any set of people that excludes JTEM. So there was an ambiguity, but that's easily resolved by the fact that the maxim of quantity means people use the word that most tightly fits the set that they actually mean - in this case the word "jillery" would have been used if he'd meant "jillery".
(note that even if "jillery" had been used it's really the "it's" that changes the meaning. "LOL JTEM thinks it's jillery who's the one that needs meds" would have had the same effect while actually mentioning you).
As far as your suggestion goes, "making fun of JTEM" and "making fun of jillery" are both relevant things John K-M could have been doing in his post at the point of the thread he posted it, so the maxim of relevance applied to the whole sentence doesn't help disambiguate between the two possibilities. The "it's others" instead of just "others" *is* a choice with different implications as to the intended meaning, hence why I thought the maxim of relevance was, um, relevant there.
But I'm just having fun with Grice's maxims here; there is only so much analysis can accomplish when intuition has failed and I think we're way past the point it can convince. My next attempt will be to wait for an opportunity to reply to some disparaging thing you say to someone else with "It's so funny to see jillery suggesting it's *others* that have [disparaging issue]" and see if you interpret it as agreement with you or an insult directed at you. (or, hopefully for the karmic balance of the universe, I'll forget about this whole thing before I remember to do that. But I'm so curious how it would go!)

 

The multitude of mindless personal attacks by multiple posters who act
as if it's clever to exercise their inner trolls, inspired by nothing
more than what you call "a misunderstanding", further supports my
original understanding.
>

>
That, or you misunderstood and everyone else understood correctly which
is why they are uniformly disagreeing with you. I guess it would hurt
your soul to go back through past posts just *trying* the alternate
interpretive lens to see if it tracks.

  You and your bedfellows love to invoke baseless "guesses".  Once
again, I suggest you test the sensitivity of your own soul, and
actually read the claims you and your bedfellows explicitly make about
my personal limitations in this very thread.
 

I put a lot of thought into what to write about your personal limitations. I don't like hurting other people's feelings. I do like to gossip but am very limited by that first thing. In this case I thought it was worth getting into because interactions such as your original response to John Kerr-Mudd can be discombobulating to people who don't expect it and at least one other poster seemed genuinely confused. When people are challenged on their sense of reality I think it can be worth speaking up to reassure them that they're not alone in seeing what they think they're seeing. I'm sorry that this translates into challenging your sense of reality instead. If we were interacting IRL I might do things differently but on the internet there's only public words to work with.
And maybe I was just doing the poster equivalent of bikeshedding. And maybe even if I was it's fine because it's TO. And maybe not. All I can say is I did put a lot of thought into things, whether any good came of it or not.
Also, I can't really justify continuing response at *this* point. I'm just interested I guess, and don't see it as particularly harmful to TO discourse.

 

I mean, that's the thing of it you know. If everyone were against you -
and on this point, they are! Why would they deny accusing you of needing
meds? Who on this board is too precious to make and stand by such an
accusation if they mean it? Does anyone talk to JTEM like "no JTEM John
Harshman wasn't calling you paranoid or a Russian agent, he was ~on your
side~ actually and you misunderstood"?

  Yes, that must be why Athel aped Harran, because he really, really
likes me.

I wasn't saying Athel really likes you, I was pointing out that when he had something negative to say about you he said it directly and nobody acted like he had said something different. As everyone generally does here with other posters - either say negative things straight out or not say them at all, but not say negative things and then conspire to pretend it wasn't negative at all.

 I gave your first reply some grace because you had only recently
returned to T.O., and so might reasonably be ignorant of the tradition
of stupid manufactured arguments posted by those who have a need to
exercise their inner trolls. That your second reply continues to
ignore the personal attacks directed at me in this very thread
suggests such grace is unjustified.

I didn't expect you to give me some grace so I appreciate that you did even if for a limited time, thank you.

--
To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge