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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

And don't forget the begs-the-question crusaders.

And the most irritating part of the redefinition of "literally" to mean the opposite of literally... there's no clear synonym that people can use when they literally mean literally.

Literally has been used as a term of hyperbole since at least 1769. That one's hard for me to get too worked up about. :-)

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-lite...

And singular they has been in use since the 13th century. Such semantic gaps really aren't a big deal tbh.

'literally literally'? (Oh god..)

While I'm here there's also 'I guess' (suppose), 'I feel like' (think), and 'So' (I'm about to start a sentence).

actually.

"Actually" means something rather different than "literally", though.

I have no idea what that means.

http://begthequestion.info/

TL;DR: almost every common usage of the phrase is incorrect.

The "raises the question" use far outstrips the "laying claim to the principle" use. In general it's wrong to call either use incorrect.

I'd avoid it entirely. The original phrase is a bad translation and the modern use triggers prescriptivists.

I've seen it used correctly just once: by a lecturer of Contemporary Philosophy marking my essay...

Be glad. Misuse of the phrase "beg the question" is like salt in my ears. But I mostly keep my mouth shut as it's a battle hopelessly lost at this point.

the way to fight back is to aggressively use it correctly when it's due.

E.G: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29291894

What would you say determines correct usage of a word of phrase?

Me. What response were you expecting?

I assume you considered a bunch of different perspectives and concluded that one is more correct than the others. I was curious about the reasoning that went into your decision.

I went through that process myself a while ago and came to a different conclusion based on the idea that the meaning of a word or phrase in conversation is determined by what it communicates. I qualify with "in conversation" because there are audiences and venues where that's not necessarily true (like in a courtroom).

It's completely arbitrary, from case to case. To answer your question about "begging the question" I think the concept of "circular reasoning" is important enough to have a cutesy phrase associated with it.

That's interesting. I agree that the concept is important and that's why I avoid begs-the-question. Most of the time it doesn't communicate what you hope it does.

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