Wait, why do you think “additive” is acceptable and “chemical” isn’t? I hereby force you to state your criteria for what substances count as additives so that I can contest them.
I don’t think “additive” is acceptable. It has the same problems. The point is that the original statement isn’t communicating anything. I pointed out that it is no better than other statements that don’t communicate anything.
Oh I see. After saying “I don’t like chemicals in my food” I understood something like, this person prefers organics. Are you not able to surmise this? If you’re not, then you’re definitely gaining less information when talking people than I am. I can generally communicate with people even if they use “chemical” imprecisely.
Just the fact this person makes low-information statements about a particular subject gives me information about what he thinks. But I wouldn’t count that as getting information from those statements.
The statements “gives” you information but that doesn’t “count” as you “getting” information. Furthermore the “low-information” statement mysteriously gives you information, yet not quite enough information to count as not a “low-information” statement. Okay, so this isn’t about communicating information, it’s about communicating information with a twist—it also has to count. If your interlocutor communicates successfully but it doesn’t count, you’re allowed to make a definition challenge, where they have to provide a set of criteria you’re allowed to attack. They then try to defend their criteria while you try to attack it, and if they defeat the definition challenge you’re allowed to move onto the next message in the initial communication.
Okay so why would anyone ever agree to play this game? It sounds completely not fun and like it’s optimized for the most uninformative things you could talk about.
The statements “gives” you information but that doesn’t “count” as you “getting” information.
It’s literally true that I got information, but I didn’t get information from it in the ordinary sense of “I parsed his words, and his words said something about X, so now I know the thing about X that is described by his words”.
There’s a difference between the information content of the statement, and the information that may be concluded from the statement in context. For instance, if I ask someone a question and he responds by snoring I may conclude that he is asleep. But I wouldn’t describe that (non-figuratively) as “he told me that he is asleep”. He didn’t tell me that; he told me nothing meaningful, even though I deduced things from it.
Just like I know that snoring people are often asleep, I know that people who complain about “chemicals” often like organic food. That doesn’t mean that either snores or statements about chemicals have any meaningful information.
I realized I was making inferences for what you mean by “ordinary senses” and “information content.” Can you please give your criteria for these two things so I can begin contesting them? I’m concerned you communicated no “ordinary sense” information in your preceding comment and there was zero information content, and I’m trying out your style where that preempts the rest of the conversation flow.
Wait, why do you think “additive” is acceptable and “chemical” isn’t? I hereby force you to state your criteria for what substances count as additives so that I can contest them.
I don’t think “additive” is acceptable. It has the same problems. The point is that the original statement isn’t communicating anything. I pointed out that it is no better than other statements that don’t communicate anything.
Oh I see. After saying “I don’t like chemicals in my food” I understood something like, this person prefers organics. Are you not able to surmise this? If you’re not, then you’re definitely gaining less information when talking people than I am. I can generally communicate with people even if they use “chemical” imprecisely.
Just the fact this person makes low-information statements about a particular subject gives me information about what he thinks. But I wouldn’t count that as getting information from those statements.
The statements “gives” you information but that doesn’t “count” as you “getting” information. Furthermore the “low-information” statement mysteriously gives you information, yet not quite enough information to count as not a “low-information” statement. Okay, so this isn’t about communicating information, it’s about communicating information with a twist—it also has to count. If your interlocutor communicates successfully but it doesn’t count, you’re allowed to make a definition challenge, where they have to provide a set of criteria you’re allowed to attack. They then try to defend their criteria while you try to attack it, and if they defeat the definition challenge you’re allowed to move onto the next message in the initial communication.
Okay so why would anyone ever agree to play this game? It sounds completely not fun and like it’s optimized for the most uninformative things you could talk about.
It’s literally true that I got information, but I didn’t get information from it in the ordinary sense of “I parsed his words, and his words said something about X, so now I know the thing about X that is described by his words”.
There’s a difference between the information content of the statement, and the information that may be concluded from the statement in context. For instance, if I ask someone a question and he responds by snoring I may conclude that he is asleep. But I wouldn’t describe that (non-figuratively) as “he told me that he is asleep”. He didn’t tell me that; he told me nothing meaningful, even though I deduced things from it.
Just like I know that snoring people are often asleep, I know that people who complain about “chemicals” often like organic food. That doesn’t mean that either snores or statements about chemicals have any meaningful information.
I realized I was making inferences for what you mean by “ordinary senses” and “information content.” Can you please give your criteria for these two things so I can begin contesting them? I’m concerned you communicated no “ordinary sense” information in your preceding comment and there was zero information content, and I’m trying out your style where that preempts the rest of the conversation flow.
All conversation requires some common ground. If you actually don’t know what I meant, there’s not much I can do to help you.
(Also, notice that “ordinary sense of” is followed by an explanation? I don’t see why you’d need another explanation after that.)
Interesting, that’s how I feel about people who say the word “chemical” to mean “pesticides and stuff.”