Willingness.
407 karma · joined August 26, 2011
Agglutination in many Native American languages and compounding in many Indo-European languages come to mind as examples where interesting nesting and complex relational structures can be found at the level of the word.
The article suggests that speakers of English or German can do "mental arithmetic" whereas speakers of Ket have lots of "math facts." I don't know anything about Ket, but German, Sanskrit, and other languages seem to have a lot in the way of mental arithmetic when it comes to making up long compound words, which are not such a static or stable currency as in, say, English.
The whole thing cools. They'll say just enough to get to the next topic gracefully. The dispute is patched up with something like "we'll agree to disagree" or something like that, in the interest of polite conversation, rather than square-on debate.
In that scenario one does not receive the full force of an opponent's argument. It never got ventilated. An opponent only brings that energy to a debate between earnest people who see themselves -- not their arguments -- as equals.
It's about learning to turn it off afterwards.
Debate at its best is where the issues are at stake -- not the relationship. Getting clear on that is an important communicative and emotional skill.
The problem with "wanting to lose" in this post is how fake and sentimental that attitude can become, against our best intentions.
If both sides can put their cards on the table, that's a more productive conversation, rather than one side shutting up and keeping theirs close to the vest.
Confrontation is not an evil to be avoided. Hurting others is the harm to be avoided. Those are two very different things. Sometimes avoiding confrontation hurts oneself and others the very most.
Furthermore, there is no logical reason why one should default to thinking that only others will bring value to the conversation, and that one's own experience and judgment are not as important to share. By sharing one's thoughts, the other side may hear, learn, or rethink something that could change their lives. To the extent that "wanting to lose" consciously or unconsciously results in one bringing less of a certain energy to a debate, that's an opportunity lost for everyone.
Discernment and diplomacy are the valuable skills here. Again, rather than check out (whether smugly or earnestly), instead, let's make efforts to figure out when, where, why, and with whom to turn on the heat, -- and then turn it off.
Sportsmanship among athletes and collegiality among lawyers are good examples of this in practice.
"And do as adversaries do in law,
Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends."
--Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Act I, sc. 2.
We can see plenty of fantasy in works of science fiction in the conventional _forms_ of science fiction -- short stories, novels, TV shows, movies, video games.
It will be interesting to see science fiction in the conventional _forms_ of fantasy -- epics, ballads, poetry, fairy tales, onomastics, runic and incantatory forms of language....
(As an aside, I've heard rumors of published contemporary sci-fi written in classical Sanskrit verse but I can't find any -- is this really a thing?)
Cards on the table at one definite time.
How much the author had to sweat to get there, to the extent it may matter at all, should show up in the results--a ruling written with a measured, judicial temperament.
To test what celebrations or outrage would happen in the streets, maybe?
If they are that concerned with public opinion -- which they shouldn't be, but say they are -- I would think that would incentivize even stronger efforts to maintain confidentiality and discretion.
(Maybe you didn't suggest that it was intentional, but an accident. Even then I might wonder why someone would let their guard down on this case. Maybe there was so much more work done on one particular case, people get physically tired, etc.)
Even if it's a late-stage draft that's leaked, that comes with its own host of problems.
Imagine a world where drafts are trotted out by lawyers seeking to argue their interpretation of an old opinion. "The Court originally was going to hold something like my opponent suggests, but that bit got deleted, your honor!"
That would be another level of the problem of what we might call "arguing the changelog," using pieces of floor debate transcripts in the legislative history of a statute.
Justice Scalia analogized that to "entering a crowded room at a cocktail party, and looking over the heads of the guests for your friends."
And that's a concern on top of the potential for a chilling effect on the judiciary.
There are so many different things going on in how judges write. I hope that they can get some _sense_ of security again so that they feel the freedom to be as open-minded as possible in figuring out the cases before them.
In English, at least, many unspeakable words used to describe Blacks, Asians, Jews, gay men, lesbian women, and others seem to have some of these "k" (or "g" (voiced)) features, harsh consonant endings, etc.
I wonder if it is like this in other languages too.
Calls to mind the Warhammer 40K idea of The Warp:
http://www.arlt.co.uk/method.html
Greek composition courses, too.
Chief Justice Roberts: “I’m sorry. Entirely what?”
“Orthogonal,” the lawyer replied. “Right angle. Unrelated. Irrelevant.”
Justice Scalia: “What was that adjective? I liked that."
“I think we should use that in the opinion,” Scalia later added.
“Or the dissent,” said Roberts.
https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/supreme_court_word_o...
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/business/worldbusiness/02...
Cram the keyboard end of a laptop between the headboard of a bed and the wall, rotate the display 180º in the OS settings, and plug in an external keyboard and mouse. Lie down in bed and compute.
Works okay except that strain is then offloaded either to your wrists if you have a regular keyboard (not like the OP has), or legs if you arch them underneath the keyboard.
Kudos to these volunteers!