A Slip-Up?

Chesterton said:

You're wrong. Sam does not always do that.

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ok. Sam does it much of the time, just like he did in the OP video. ....why are you defending him? That's kind of strange for someone who just complained to me that "we have to stand guard against the bastions of the Devil's forces!"

Chesterton said:

Now you're saying he didn't? See, in my culture did means didn't.

You're apparently confusing me with another member. Although I agree with the sentiment, I never said that anywhere.

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....no, I was referencing your earlier statement about how we shouldn't kowtow to certain kinds of people.

Chesterton said:

Ah well, you put it in quotation marks as people do when they're making a verbatim quote. We have to be careful with grammar.

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Ok. So.....................what exactly is it we're supposed to be talking about here, and why? Is this some kind of 'let's see if we can humble 2PV experiment?' If not, then I can just move on in agreeing with you than Sam Harris gets some significant things wrong in the your OP video.

As far as my little video I added above, I only added it to try to add some "juice" to your critique of Harris. It wasn't meant to get us off track. (And besides, I like Tyson. I think he's cool.)

Chesterton said:

No, not at all. As I said, I want to understand you. I'm honestly at a loss to understand how you think Tyson can be right in criticizing Harris' language use, when Harris only said something any 10-year-old could understand.

I don't mind getting off track, because this language stuff figures greatly into our society and politics today. "Malicious misunderstanding" (pretending to misunderstand in order to attack your opponent) has become a tactical weapon which a lot of people fall for. I have nothing against Tyson generally, I just think he's wrong in the video. He starts out acknowledging that it's kind of dumb to not understand that "most water bottles are plastic" doesn't mean "all water bottles are plastic", but then flip-flops and says that "some Muslims are radical" could somehow legitimately be heard as "all Muslims are radical". It doesn't make sense. Culture has nothing to do with it; you either know what a word means or you don't.

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Everything you just said isn't quite how either communication theory or hermeneutics actually plays out in the real world of human beings; moreover, people's brains are not installed into human bodies in clone like fashion from a heavenly conveyor belt, so there is a whole range of developmental levels, emotional levels, as well as psychological impairments that can butt in on a person's ability to "hear" and "understand" what another person is trying to communicate. So, it is possible that a woman who grew up in a Muslim culture won't be able to fully interpret what the meaning is of something that is said by someone expressing a line of thought like Harris'. If you don't have these problems, then....that's terrific. If only more people could be like you, Chesterton.

Of course, this isn't to deny that a number of persons do resort to the tactic of "malicious misunderstanding." We know that they can and they do. In fact, I've had to deal with some of that kind of thing lately in my own personal life, but we might not want to jump to conclusions and assume that every time someone seems to misinterpret something we've said---however simply articulated we think our own statements are---that those persons are therefore purposely being "malicious."

Chesterton said:

Oh wow, that is soooo RACIST! I should like totally report you.

So, pretend we're not humans. Pretend you're a red apple, and I want to express the fact that "some apples are green". My natural impulse is to simply say "some apples are green", but how should I properly say it so that a red apple could understand it?

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.............and here I thought only NV could devolve to the use of such rudimentary hypotheses.

Thanks for that bit of humor, Chesterton!