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Comment by dmlorenzetti | Hacker News Reader

Correct. I could have written "bored by the whole exercise" rather than saying she had "checked out of the conversation".

To recap-- my brother said, literally, one sentence. I added one more sentence, relating the question to another field of study. Our friend was instantly, irremediably, and unabashedly bored.

From which I concluded that she took little pleasure in exploring any aspect of the statement she herself had introduced.

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That she was "bored" by the exercise doesn't necessarily mean that she doesn't share you and your brother's bold, hard-driving, searingly intense curiosity about the world, and the nature of our ability to infer knowledge about it.

It might, instead, have had something do with the fact that the point you guys were trying to make was rather trivial.

Or that disecting a joke ruins it?

Exactly. Nobody cares if the exact details aren't 100% correct in a non-technical discussion. Suppose I begin recounting a blog entry which describes an odd situation. I may not remember all the details right, but I certainly have the gist of it and can convey that. There is no point in someone stepping in and saying, "you know, it was actually in Des Moines, not Dallas," if the city is entirely irrelevant to actual content of the post.

What is the group supposed to do with that statement? Someone has to segue back to the original topic, while someone else just lost face. Most people will just either ignore the correction entirely, or just drop the topic altogether.

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