ArisKatsaris comments on Help! Name suggestions needed for Rationality-Inst! - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (297)
Why is Less Wrong against humor? I am all for being professional - if all you are looking for his humor then you can go to reddit or something - but why should we be actively discouraging people from being funny at all? I've seen this in other communities, too. As much respect as I have for Eliezer (which is a lot), people tend to get all emotionally attached to the "hero" of their community/movement, and suddenly it becomes not ok to joke about the authorities or otherwise hint anything negative about them at all. Doesn't go well with your whole "we're not a cult" thing. Just saying.
Are you possibly generalizing from one example/committing a fundamental attribution error?
I'm a non-native English speaker. Can you explain to me what's the intended connotations for the sentence "just saying" here? Is someone supposed to be less offended by the potentially offensive previous statement?
"Just saying" / "I'm just sayin'":
(Short version: Yes, you've basically got the intended meaning right, but this figure of speech has its detractors who don't like its use as an all-purpose escape hatch. End of short version. For what it's worth I'm not one of the aforementioned detractors. My translation of the phrase is: "What I just said was intended not as an insult or provocation, but as a factual observation, and I'm letting you know that in a mildly humorous way by using a current figure of speech.")
Edit: Bonus fun link: Here's the song "Punch Bowl" by Punch Brothers, which uses the "I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'" variant of this phrase.
Edit 2: My Mom says she only likes this phrase when it's used by an animal.