Duncan you haven’t actually refuted my point, but write as if you had in the latter paragraphs… Take for example,
It’s true that one can set up a local, idiosyncratic meaning of a phrase that means anything, but I think it is false that there’s anything which is [true] which also, say, 70+ people out of a randomly polled 100 would agree means “only among the population vying for social status.”
Okay, maybe it is false that 70+ out of 100 would share the meaning of my original statement, we obviously will not figure out the exact threshold without spending far more effort.
But I’m okay with utilizing definitions only 69 out of 100 would share. The exact proportion doesn’t really matter much to me, whether 69, or 70, or more, or less, out of 100. That’s my point, there are a boundless number of potentially valid arguments for and against drawing the cutoff somewhere along that spectrum. For never drawing lines, for always drawing lines, for a mixed strategy, etc.
EDIT: To be clear there are probably many folks on LW with somewhat higher or lower cutoffs, many who’ve never considered this at all, many who decide not to think in terms of a true/false binary, and so on. And if you trawl through the archives you can see many examples.
You write as if I had invented completely different meanings that 0 out of 100 would share.
So it’s only potentially false according to your ironically idiosyncratic requirement that 70+ out of 100 is the cutoff for being ‘true’.
If you’ve thought about it enough to realize it’s a continuous spectrum in practice versus a theoretical binary, like many other phenomena, then reflect on why you then try to defend an arbitrary cutoff, perhaps it is related to the topic of social status, testing boundaries, or other ideas covered in the op.
Duncan you haven’t actually refuted my point, but write as if you had in the latter paragraphs… Take for example,
Okay, maybe it is false that 70+ out of 100 would share the meaning of my original statement, we obviously will not figure out the exact threshold without spending far more effort.
But I’m okay with utilizing definitions only 69 out of 100 would share. The exact proportion doesn’t really matter much to me, whether 69, or 70, or more, or less, out of 100. That’s my point, there are a boundless number of potentially valid arguments for and against drawing the cutoff somewhere along that spectrum. For never drawing lines, for always drawing lines, for a mixed strategy, etc.
EDIT: To be clear there are probably many folks on LW with somewhat higher or lower cutoffs, many who’ve never considered this at all, many who decide not to think in terms of a true/false binary, and so on. And if you trawl through the archives you can see many examples.
You write as if I had invented completely different meanings that 0 out of 100 would share.
So it’s only potentially false according to your ironically idiosyncratic requirement that 70+ out of 100 is the cutoff for being ‘true’.
If you’ve thought about it enough to realize it’s a continuous spectrum in practice versus a theoretical binary, like many other phenomena, then reflect on why you then try to defend an arbitrary cutoff, perhaps it is related to the topic of social status, testing boundaries, or other ideas covered in the op.