Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Most forms of slang have a bit of that experience for me. The whole point of language is an attempt to make it possible to transfer information from one person to another. If someone is going to intentionally obscure what they are saying, they're just being an asshole, making other people do mental work, either so they don't have to ('So I was, like, mluh' instead of 'I felt angry for being mistreated.') or just to assert dominance. (using heavily obscurant slang their friend group came up with outside of the group, 'totes mcgrotes crackin' being used to mean 'very horny')
Sometimes we disagree on what the required amount of information that is needed for a sentence.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle
And sometimes we're playing the wrong "game"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_(philosophy)
Those are essentially what I am talking about. The speaker should want to be understood, and should make it as easy as possible for the other person to understand them. By choosing to 'play a different game' they are going against the cooperative principle, seeking to benefit themselves at the cost of others. The cost may be fairly trivial, like cutting in line costing the person behind only a minute or two, but it absolutely suggests the person doing it is selfish.
From your point of view. Your point of view may be the objectively correct one, and I would love if just saying "no more crazy people" meant no more fighting with people who have way too much confidence and zero rationality, but they still might have their own points of view.
And I for one can't say which is the objectively right one.
For instance I find that my personal preference to abiding Grice's maxims would be way too detail-oriented, and people usually feel as though I've broken the maxim of quantity and quality by "over-serving them" whereas I feel they're not nearly accurate enough. Or they're too accurate about something way too irrelevant and I'm very confident in the matter and thus find the quantity of their explanation superfluous.
It's so much about context and less about what is "objectively right."
I used to drive a taxi and would have no problem letting other people "set the rules" as it were (people really enjoyed me as a customer service agent in all different jobs I was in, and I'm not just saying that even though ofc everyone would think so becuase I'm saying it myself), but yet I don't have lots of close personal friends, because I get to actually talk about what's interesting to me and not just yap about some irrelevant bullshit, people have a different preference to how much they like talking and thinking about things. Mines "more than theirs". I can accommodate their rules, but they clearly can't accommodate mine. So it would only make sense for me, the more adaptable one, to adapt, as they're clearly incapable. Unless I want to be alone.
Would you disagree?
I would agree in some senses, but not others. I maintain that it is good to be precise, and that most people can be taught to be precise, given time and encouragement, and it is only a society that demands everything happen 'efficiently' that turns time into a scarcity such that people feel they have to find something ill-considered to say immediately rather than think for a time and find the better way to express what they mean. There are those with a mental handicap, and I wouldn't expect the same from them that I would from someone less limited, but I will always lose esteem for those who choose speed over truth when the circumstances permit the time, or choose precision incorrectness in the service of themselves at my expense.
I make no claim of objective moral value, but rather the practical value. If one speaks, it is for a purpose. Speaking with the intention of being understood is the most common and speaking with precision serves that purpose. Speaking with the intention of obscuring is generally regarded as a form of lying, and lying can be regarded as a form of violation, akin to dosing someone with a hallucinogen, distorting their perception of reality. Such violations can serve a purpose, but they remain violations, and are generally not to the benefit of the listener. The general regard for someone who harms others for their own benefit, once the harm is recognized, is negative.
If we want to stand back from the structures of social norms, personal interactions, epistemic/ontological stakes, etc. none of it matters, but we don't get to live in that conceptual space, only visit.