SaidAchmiz comments on Rationality Quotes September 2013 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Vaniver 04 September 2013 05:02AM

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Comment author: SaidAchmiz 06 September 2013 05:20:11PM 2 points [-]

B here is violating Grice's maxims. That's the point. He's not following the cooperative principle. He's trying to insult A (perhaps because he is frustrated with the conversation). So applying Gricean reasoning to deduce B's intended meaning is incorrect.

If A asks "why are you changing the subject?", B's answer would likely be something along the lines of "And your mother's face is ugly too!".

Comment author: [deleted] 14 September 2013 02:14:07PM 1 point [-]

B here is violating Grice's maxims. That's the point. He's not following the cooperative principle.

Then he doesn't get to complain when people mis-get his point.

Comment author: SaidAchmiz 14 September 2013 07:34:02PM 0 points [-]

My point is that Grice's maxims, useful though they are, do not fully capture how human conversation goes — most notably, those cases in which at least one party has a hostile or uncooperative attitude toward the other. People in such cases do get that they're being insulted or whatever; A, as you portray him, comes off as simply bad at understanding non-literal meaning (or he is being intentionally obstructive/pedantic).