For me, the problem with this is that if I’m speaking to an autistic person(and a very large number of LWers identify themselves as on the autistic spectrum), they tend to use literal meanings very often. In fact, some of them(including me) get offended or confused when they say something literal and it is interpreted as sarcastic or subtext.
Suppose I am speaking to an autistic person, and he says, “I am 87% confident that X is true.” The issue with this statement is that a lot of people use this sort of statement in a metaphorical sense(ie. they just pull the number out of their butt to make it oddly specific and get a cheap laugh) but an autistic or rationality-trained person may literally mean that they are 87% sure it is true, especially if they are good at measuring their own confidence levels. In this case, the usual situation- the number being picked randomly—is false.
There are also, however, a large number of statements that are almost always meant sarcastically or in a non-literal way. The statement “I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords” is almost always sarcastic as it is 1) invoking a well-known meme which is intended to be used in this manner and 2) it is extremely unlikely that the person I am speaking to is actually someone who wants aliens to take over the world. These statements are, for want of a better word, “cached non-literal statements”(as in, it is an automatic thought that these statements are not literal), or CNLS for short.
It might be useful to append the guideline “All statements have a probability of being literal that is worth considering, except in the case of CNLSes. This probability is adjusted up if the person you are speaking to is known for being extremely literal and adjusted down if they are known for using figurative speech(although that last sentence should be fairly obvious, I throw it in for the sake of completeness)” to your thesis.
This actually got me thinking if there is a methodical, objective and accurate way to find out if someone’s statement is literal or not, perhaps by measuring their posture, tone of voice. The only difficulty is to try to weasel some quantifiable data out of context. If it can be done, that would be a great resource to people who have trouble understanding the non-literal meanings of statements everywhere.
Wait, wait. I’m worried what you just heard was, “Give me a lot of bacon and eggs.” What I said was, “Give me all the bacon and eggs you have”. Do you understand?
This probability is adjusted up if the person you are speaking to is known for being extremely literal and adjusted down if they are known for using figurative speech(although that last sentence should be fairly obvious, I throw it in for the sake of completeness)” to your thesis.
Exactly. I think my thesis covers that in saying “Depending on how confident you are in your interpretation”. I don’t explicitly talk about how do the interpretation because:
It’s usually easy enough to assign a good confidence level to your interpretation. With a good confidence level you could cater your response properly. Ie. If you’re 99% confident, say, “I think you’re trying to say this”. If you’re 50% confident you could say, “I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, but I think that it may be A, B or C.”.
It’s outside of the scope of this article. Perhaps I could mention a few guidelines, but a) it’s really a very intuitive thing, b) I don’t know much about that topic (how to interpret), and c) I sense that it’d be rather involved to go over how to interpret, and that the benefit isn’t worth it because it’s something that most people could do well enough intuitively.
For me, the problem with this is that if I’m speaking to an autistic person(and a very large number of LWers identify themselves as on the autistic spectrum), they tend to use literal meanings very often. In fact, some of them(including me) get offended or confused when they say something literal and it is interpreted as sarcastic or subtext.
Suppose I am speaking to an autistic person, and he says, “I am 87% confident that X is true.” The issue with this statement is that a lot of people use this sort of statement in a metaphorical sense(ie. they just pull the number out of their butt to make it oddly specific and get a cheap laugh) but an autistic or rationality-trained person may literally mean that they are 87% sure it is true, especially if they are good at measuring their own confidence levels. In this case, the usual situation- the number being picked randomly—is false.
There are also, however, a large number of statements that are almost always meant sarcastically or in a non-literal way. The statement “I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords” is almost always sarcastic as it is 1) invoking a well-known meme which is intended to be used in this manner and 2) it is extremely unlikely that the person I am speaking to is actually someone who wants aliens to take over the world. These statements are, for want of a better word, “cached non-literal statements”(as in, it is an automatic thought that these statements are not literal), or CNLS for short.
It might be useful to append the guideline “All statements have a probability of being literal that is worth considering, except in the case of CNLSes. This probability is adjusted up if the person you are speaking to is known for being extremely literal and adjusted down if they are known for using figurative speech(although that last sentence should be fairly obvious, I throw it in for the sake of completeness)” to your thesis.
This actually got me thinking if there is a methodical, objective and accurate way to find out if someone’s statement is literal or not, perhaps by measuring their posture, tone of voice. The only difficulty is to try to weasel some quantifiable data out of context. If it can be done, that would be a great resource to people who have trouble understanding the non-literal meanings of statements everywhere.
Give me all the bacon and eggs you have.
Wait, wait. I’m worried what you just heard was, “Give me a lot of bacon and eggs.” What I said was, “Give me all the bacon and eggs you have”. Do you understand?
-Ron Swanson
Great example :)
Exactly. I think my thesis covers that in saying “Depending on how confident you are in your interpretation”. I don’t explicitly talk about how do the interpretation because:
It’s usually easy enough to assign a good confidence level to your interpretation. With a good confidence level you could cater your response properly. Ie. If you’re 99% confident, say, “I think you’re trying to say this”. If you’re 50% confident you could say, “I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, but I think that it may be A, B or C.”.
It’s outside of the scope of this article. Perhaps I could mention a few guidelines, but a) it’s really a very intuitive thing, b) I don’t know much about that topic (how to interpret), and c) I sense that it’d be rather involved to go over how to interpret, and that the benefit isn’t worth it because it’s something that most people could do well enough intuitively.