Comment on Whining-Based Communities

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:32:03 GMT

I know that you likely hear me as saying crazy things all the time, and that you probably can't distinguish misunderstandings given that you misunderstand so very much of what I say, in the same way that fish don't grasp the nature of water. So I'll make this painfully obvious.

The comment to which I was responding was quite obviously utilizing irony, as Buffet is quite wealthy, and thus the comment was false in such an easy-to-detect way that granting the commenter even rudimentary intelligence leads us to suspect that the surface meaning wasn't the one intended.

My own statement also seems to be false when some thought is given to the matter. And so, especially in the context of the preceding comment, it would seem wise to search the statement for irony and double-meanings. But Buffet has also made some peculiar choices - such as giving his money to Bill Gates to distribute charitably, instead of asking Bill Gates to give him Gates' money to invest charitably. I believe you've made that point yourself, even.

Testing the comment for gentle sarcasm forces the reader to question and re-evaluate the effectiveness of Buffet's choices, and possibly conclude that it's not actually such an open-and-shut matter after all.

Discuss