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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 5176597" data-attributes="member: 54707">I'm sure we all have from time to time, even if we didn't intend to. That's language for ya, and part of being human.Those two were good twists and obverses of these two:I think these kinda things are best explained by understanding the inherent limitations of language, but modern folks, especially Geeks and Nerds (and I'm not using those terms in the derogatory sense, but in the descriptive sense) think that human language oughtta work like some kinda current software language, and the truth is it just doesn't and probably never will. So rather than seeking to clarify what might be implied (and human language is filled with unexpressed yet underlying implications), each Geek and Nerd has their own "database of denotative definitions" (Geeks especially I have noticed often have a very hard time distinguishing vagueness and metaphor in communications) which they immediately assume must be "correct in all circumstances." The typical Geek does not connote well I have observed, or easily detect implied statements of irony and so forth, and I think this is probably the result of modern society's way of educating people and the current typical and standardized way of using language, like it is a mere "technical function." Anyways, that's my observation, and this modern way of using language leads to some silly and amusing arguments to me, because often when I read some argument on the internet the first thought that occurs to me is, "these guys are arguing pretty much the same thing is the same way with pretty much the same language, and they are only off by less than a degree in terminology, yet to them you'd think one guy is speaking Swahili and the other guy a dialect of Apache."Anyways, it amuses me. By the way I also think that this is why so many Geeks and Nerds like things like Lost, and D&D, and so forth. Vague, implicational, metaphorical, symbolic entertainments return to them in language and form what they have lost from or purged from their own language and everyday, work-a-day "idea set." In other words, in other worlds they get to be metaphorical and psychological (as the Greeks meant the term, not as moderns do) and spiritual and symbolic again. I mean, other than just mathematically symbolic.</blockquote>

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