Comment by executesorder66 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by executesorder66 | Hacker News Reader

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executesorder66

From Wikipedia:

> Word salad is a "confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and phrases",[1] most often used to describe a symptom of a neurological or mental disorder. The words may or may not be grammatically correct, but are semantically confused to the point that the listener cannot extract any meaning from them.

It isn't word salad. Yes it is not perfect English, but I can quite easily understand what he is saying.

Edit: since the parent comment was flagged here was the quote (taken from the templeOS.org homepage):

> Reputation is worth more than gold. Niggers have a reputation -- no fathers. Irish have a reputation. Germans have a reputation. Attacker has the advantage. Jews have a reputation. God said the French once stood for character. (Code of Chivalry) Ironic. I guess Jews did, too. Woah! God is boss. Too bad the Jews were cowards and didn't assassinate NAZI's.

Can you really say that you cannot extract any meaning from that?

Meaning is hard.

What know I cannot do is construct an coherent or even intelligible argument from the quoted paragraph. I can extract meanings from some of the sentences; but I also can see you have not even bothered to explain your objections to them.

More importantly, it seems you don't even care about coherency. It looks like that to you, if something "feels bad" then it is bad.

What the hell are you talking about?

> More importantly, it seems you don't even care about coherency. It looks like that to you, if something "feels bad" then it is bad.

I don't understand where this is coming from. Please explain what you mean, and why you think that.

> but I also can see you have not even bothered to explain your objections to them.

My objection was that the parent post claimed the quote was "word salad" and I claim it is not, because the quote obviously has a message and it is not difficult to figure out what it is.

If you meant that I didn't bother explaining the message, well then here is how I interpret the quote:

>Reputation is worth more than gold. Niggers have a reputation -- no fathers.

He's talking about stereotypes here, and how there is a stereotype that many black men abandon their children/family.

> Irish have a reputation. Germans have a reputation.

Again referencing stereotypes.

> Attacker has the advantage.

Guy who hits first usually wins the fight.

> Jews have a reputation. God said the French once stood for character. (Code of Chivalry) Ironic.

Again, stereotypes. He is obviously referencing WW2 in this context and talking about how the French were easily defeated by the Germans.

> I guess Jews did, too. Woah! God is boss. Too bad the Jews were cowards and didn't assassinate NAZI's.

I'm guessing here he is saying the Jews were God's chosen people, but they didn't live up to that an let the Germans almost destroy them.

So yeah, most people don't talk like this guy in normal conversation, but it is pretty clear to me that he is talking about stereotypes and sticking up for yourself. I might not get the finer details he is trying to communicate, but even so it is far from unintelligible.

You offer interpretations of several sentences. These interpretations are guesswork. Even if we take your interpretations as perfectly correct, they don't knit together into any coherent message.

The man is schizophrenic. You are holding him to account for a kind of performance that he is biologically not equipped to provide. He isn't harming anyone and as far as anyone can interpret what he says, many times he uses words like "nigger" he is complaining about things like how we have made computing overcomplicated. I think it's worth it to cut the guy a break.

That doesn't mean we accept racism in general, it means we don't have to pick on people who can't help the way they express themselves. Do we pick on people with Tourette's for saying bad words?

Yes, of course I can't (nor anyone else) know for certain exactly what someone else means when they communicate.

> Even if we take your interpretations as perfectly correct, they don't knit together into any coherent message.

Well I guess we differ on this point and that's okay. The overall message I got from that quote was that every group has a stereotype, and one's actions affect the stereotype of your race. And so you should stick up for yourself.

That makes sense to me.

For the record, I am not judging the guy, and I don't care if what he says offends people. I know he has mental health issues, and that it affects the things he thinks/says.

I was just saying that the quote was not "word salad", according to the definition I provided. If no one else can see the gist of what he is saying then fine. I guess we all see patterns differently.

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