“There is swelling” vs “There is swelling and also I am a doctor” literally means something different while “There is swelling” vs “There is edema” merely implies something different to people familiar with who tends to use which words.
Yes, but I don’t think this is particularly analogous, specifically because the difference in interpretation, in practice, between “swelling” and “edema” seems to me like it’s likely at least an order of magnitude smaller than the difference in interpretation, in practice, between “this is crazy” and “this sounds crazy to me.”
As for whether either of these usages are wrong, it depends entirely on whether you want to successfully communicate or not. If you reliably cause your listener to receive concepts that are different than those you were trying to transmit, and this is down to utterly predictable boring simple truths about your language usage, it’s certainly your call if you want to keep doing a thing you know will cause wrong beliefs in the people around you.
Separately, 100% of the people I’ve encountered using the word “based” are radical leftist transfolk, and there are like twelve of them?
I understood “based” to be a 4chan-ism but I didn’t think very hard about the example, it is possible I chose a word that does not actually work in the way I had meant to illustrate. Hopefully the intended meaning was still clear.
Yes, but I don’t think this is particularly analogous, specifically because the difference in interpretation, in practice, between “swelling” and “edema” seems to me like it’s likely at least an order of magnitude smaller than the difference in interpretation, in practice, between “this is crazy” and “this sounds crazy to me.”
As for whether either of these usages are wrong, it depends entirely on whether you want to successfully communicate or not. If you reliably cause your listener to receive concepts that are different than those you were trying to transmit, and this is down to utterly predictable boring simple truths about your language usage, it’s certainly your call if you want to keep doing a thing you know will cause wrong beliefs in the people around you.
Separately, 100% of the people I’ve encountered using the word “based” are radical leftist transfolk, and there are like twelve of them?
I understood “based” to be a 4chan-ism but I didn’t think very hard about the example, it is possible I chose a word that does not actually work in the way I had meant to illustrate. Hopefully the intended meaning was still clear.