Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3629858" data-attributes="member: 2067">...curse my inability to drop it and my boredom here at work!...right, because trying to force someone to do anything is really what's going on at all anywhere in this thread.The way I read it, the OP had a complaint about a term, it was discussed for a while, and gradually transformed into several people (call them the Martians) saying that the OP has the wrong definition for the term, a point which was challenged by others saying they totally understood what the OP was talking about (call them the Anti-Martians), and it wasn't what these Martians are saying the term means. Many of these Anti-Martians supported the OP's position that the term doesn't work for what it wants to work for. The Martians disagreed, claiming that the Anti-Martians were just being hyper-sensitive (the giant "taking offense" strawman).I, as an Anti-Martian, believe the term doesn't work for what it is intended for. I don't care about the reasons for this (though I do believe to assume it is because everyone who is against the term is taking needless offense is disingenuous). All I care about is that the term does not work as it is intended to work. I don't want to fix things so that it can work as the Martians intend. Rather, I point out the flaws in the word, including a needlessly subjective definition that the OP obviously didn't understand. And your defense, as a Martian, is "You're really emotionally damaged by the phrase, you're trying to control my words, we're not talking about definitions any more." It doesn't matter how I feel or what motives I truly have. All that really matters is if the word is useful for the purposes of comment. My rational, educated answer, is "No." Why? Because it doesn't convey the message it means to. My evidence? The first post, plus everyone saying "I don't mean that!"Sure, a reasonable person can disagree with me and say that the meaning is clear, but they'd really have to demonstrate that this thread didn't just start off with a conversation about how the OP's definition of the term was wrong from some angles and accurate from others to convince me of that. The intent of the communication doesn't matter. How the communication is received does. If the point of communication isn't to cause someone to receive some meaning, it's just parrot-talk. #1: You're wrong. I don't need to evolve myself to propose a theory of evolution, I don't need to eat a maggot to question their tastiness, and I don't need to be unclear myself to say that the term is unclear. #2: I am arguing that Magic Walmart means significantly different things to enough of the intended audience to render it more useless than other, competing, more efficient, more specific terms. Such as "easily buying magic items."The whole "offensive" tangent is entirely pointless. What makes the term less clear than "easily buying magic items" should be fairly evident: It's more ambiguous. Offense or not really only describes how hard it is to get to a clear definition of the term that all can understand. The fact that you don't see the problem with this statement, is the problem with this statement.</blockquote>

Verification