Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (73216)	8/25/2003 1:46:46 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

So, if I consider that post to be an insult, then you have insulted me? I simply disagree. To me, as I have said before, an insult has to be like a completed pass in football. It has to be delivered as such, and it has to be received as such. If either is missing, it's not, for me, an insult, but just a remark. It's another instance of the old objective vs. subjective issue. You view insults as objective, I view them as subjective. And, indeed, it goes back to the basics of how people view language. Whether Plato is right, and words have absolute meaning outside of human use, or whether words only have meaning as humans use and interpret them. Here's a question for you. Suppose I write something to you (I say writing because if I spoke it there would be facial and other physical cues) in an obscure language that neither your nor anybody else on SI recognizes and which has no on-line dictionary so you have effectively no way to interpret it. I just write three words, and nothing else. You just shrug your shoulders and move on because you have no idea what I said. Now, if what I wrote is a compliment in that language, have I complimented you? And if what I wrote is an insult in that language, have I insulted you? Or, suppose I write to you "your posts sing like a cuckoo." Now, all you know is that cuckoos sing nicely, so you take it as a compliment. But I happen to know that in Elizabeth England to call a man a cuckoo is an aphorism for saying he is a cuckold, which is a deadly insult to him and to his wife. But you don't know this. So you feel complimented. So, have you been complimented, or have you been insulted, or both, or neither?