The principle of charity forces people to privilege interpretations they consider unlikely, even if they aren’t the readings they glean automatically. If their first reading implies that the author is innately evil or incredibly stupid, that indicates reinterpretation is in order.
If your point is that it pattern matches for bad things, OK, Luke is communicating suboptimally in the context of many readers being systematically biased and unfair and other writers using similar words to mean mean things.
If their first reading implies that the author is innately evil or incredibly stupid, that indicates reinterpretation is in order.
You seem to be assuming that people can make such reinterpretations in the way you’re looking for. This is not always true. And, even in cases where it is, I suspect that the initial interpretation—the one that’s considered most likely—is the one that counts in terms of affecting the person’s psychological/emotional state.
The principle of charity forces people to privilege interpretations they consider unlikely, even if they aren’t the readings they glean automatically. If their first reading implies that the author is innately evil or incredibly stupid, that indicates reinterpretation is in order.
If your point is that it pattern matches for bad things, OK, Luke is communicating suboptimally in the context of many readers being systematically biased and unfair and other writers using similar words to mean mean things.
You seem to be assuming that people can make such reinterpretations in the way you’re looking for. This is not always true. And, even in cases where it is, I suspect that the initial interpretation—the one that’s considered most likely—is the one that counts in terms of affecting the person’s psychological/emotional state.