"If we could convince [any] Sociopath that we were all Losers, we might be able to entice them into spilling their secrets as 'Straighttalk'. (Arguably that's what this book is..)"
On one hand Rao doesn't say much about Gametalk (he basically defers to Eric Berne) which is the Loser's sociolect and should well be our default.
On the other, Rao much more optimistic than Orwell, who declared doublespeak the lingua franca?
If time travel were possible, one of the first things I'd do is introduce Orwell to the 'algospeak' of today. This would do two things, firstly it'd show him a decent piece of evidence that Newspeak isn't as effective a tool for limiting human thought as he believed, and secondly he'd have to write another version of Politics and the English Language aimed at the language sins of attention economy era social media.
Or is this the sense of "literally" which actually means "figuratively"?
That's the closest thing I'm finding. Not seeing reporting that he literally said "war is peace".
What I mean is that it makes no sense to say you're fighting a war to achieve peace if you're the one who started the war, breaking the peace that existed before then.
If peace is your goal, then the status quo was already in line with your goal. Starting the war contradicts your stated goal of peace.
Do I really have to spell all that out?
First, it could be that you believe that war is already happening. In this case, Israel and other opponents of Iran might think that the status quo was a shadow war, and they are just continuing the war in a way that is to their advantage.
Second, even if peace technically exists at the moment, one side might believe that the other is moving toward war, and if allowed to complete preparations, will be significantly harder to overcome when they start a war in the future. In that case, preemptive war might be thought to engender peace in the medium or long term.
We don't have to agree with these casus bellis to acknowledge that they are at least superficially reasonable justifications, presuming they fit the facts.
You can't make this up.
We now need a new way to convey to listeners that our words need to be taken literally. Perhaps the VBA method and just double the 'literally's:
I took a flaming shot of tequila and my mouth is literally literally on fire
Here's one question I asked:
"How does Eric Berne's Gametalk as interpreted by Venkatesh Rao signal to the sociopaths that those who engage in them are losers worth talking to? Distinguish between "channels" that Eric has identified as well as new signals that Rao or others have discovered."
Mike is the archetypal nihilist (Sociopath or Loser), the other two would potentially be engaging in a Clueless interaction if Mike wasn't there, according to the Scott/Rao theory of jokes, you need 3 for a Loser joke.
The preceding banter seems to be more of a Loser Gametalk: no social status is at stake; it's irrelevant to their white-collar role. Mike's Straighttalk intervention is typical of a sociopath; the wall breaking joke is that these Losers don't know what his real job is. If they did, the pointless but playful debate would have died a violent death-- because it'd get too real
If these were Clueless middle managers debating their value to their company, it might even be out of character for Mike to notice them..