The debate community seems to use language that in many ways is more distilled than normal conversation. That is, the true function of things such as small talk is to signal intelligence, status, skill, etc. and the function of "debate" is to signal allegiance to your tribe and to point out norm violators etc, as opposed to say truth seeking. Once you realise this it's easy to see how a group of wordcels optimising for language's true social function come to the conclusion that something something people of colour something something metaphysical nothingness etc. is the best most pure form of debate and discussion. Similarly if you observe ordinary people discussing politics and such you can see the less pure less dense version of this phenomenon, its only really a small minority of people who are actually interested in using language as a way to exchange information or engage in truth seeking. The interesting question would be how someone in this category could interface with normal people to aquire desirable ends, we probably have to engage with their wordplay to some extent.
The 'disimbricated' thing seems very uncharitable. No, no definitions come up for 'disimbricated', but almost 2,000 examples of usage do, and google helpfully suggests 'imbricated' as an alternative (which, given the prevalence of the prefix 'dis-' as a negation, was already quite an obvious avenue of inquiry).
'Imbricated' means 'overlapping or caused to be overlapping'. So 'disimbricated' would mean 'altered so as to no longer be overlapping'. In other words, saying something 'cannot be disimbricated' seems roughly equivalent to saying it is inextricable.
It wasn't that hard.
It really undermines your otherwise-reasonable critique of the argument to pretend not to understand the fairly obvious meaning of a not-unheard of word.
The debate community seems to use language that in many ways is more distilled than normal conversation. That is, the true function of things such as small talk is to signal intelligence, status, skill, etc. and the function of "debate" is to signal allegiance to your tribe and to point out norm violators etc, as opposed to say truth seeking. Once you realise this it's easy to see how a group of wordcels optimising for language's true social function come to the conclusion that something something people of colour something something metaphysical nothingness etc. is the best most pure form of debate and discussion. Similarly if you observe ordinary people discussing politics and such you can see the less pure less dense version of this phenomenon, its only really a small minority of people who are actually interested in using language as a way to exchange information or engage in truth seeking. The interesting question would be how someone in this category could interface with normal people to aquire desirable ends, we probably have to engage with their wordplay to some extent.
The language is the message. Verbosity is the point. Understanding this is the shortcut to a better place.
> Blackness is the embodiment of metaphysical nothingness
I chuckle every time I read this. Just absurd lol
The 'disimbricated' thing seems very uncharitable. No, no definitions come up for 'disimbricated', but almost 2,000 examples of usage do, and google helpfully suggests 'imbricated' as an alternative (which, given the prevalence of the prefix 'dis-' as a negation, was already quite an obvious avenue of inquiry).
'Imbricated' means 'overlapping or caused to be overlapping'. So 'disimbricated' would mean 'altered so as to no longer be overlapping'. In other words, saying something 'cannot be disimbricated' seems roughly equivalent to saying it is inextricable.
It wasn't that hard.
It really undermines your otherwise-reasonable critique of the argument to pretend not to understand the fairly obvious meaning of a not-unheard of word.
Great post but:
imbricate - overlap or cause to overlap.
"a distinguishing feature of the echinoids is that the ossicles imbricate"
Of course, the usage example pretty much tells us everything we need to know.
get a hobby