Cihan_Baran comments on Rationality and the English Language - Less Wrong

35 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 September 2007 10:55PM

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Comment author: Cihan_Baran 13 September 2007 02:09:32AM 1 point [-]

Yay! And I am honored that my mentioning of Orwell's essay lead you to discus it!

I am not quite sure I agree with this, however,:"Whatever the audience thinks you said is what you said, whether you meant to say it or not; you can't argue with the audience no matter how clever your justifications."

Doesn't this make misunderstanding or misinterpretation -just by definition- impossible? I do think misinterpretation is a genuine possibility.

Also, you left out the good bit in your Orwell quote (probably to shorten the length):

one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. (Emphasis mine)