Re: I need help explaining basic linguistic concepts to a lay person

jayne.kulikauskas@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Using what makes sense to you as your criterion is not working.
You are making a fool of yourself.


Jayne, you can think of me as that fool however much you want.
You're hardly the kind of person I would go out of my way to
impress.  What is important to me is how I think about myself.  And
I don't think of myself as a fool.  So, that ad hominen is wasted
on me.  Why do you even bother?

I felt sorry for you. It wasn't an ad hominem; it was advice. 

And you expect her to understand that?
The question remains, why do you, after knowing her for quite a while
(?) now, bother debating anything with her? Is it missionary charity?
Does she behave differently elsewhere? Because here all she does is
assert some uninformed stuff, upon which people try to explain to her
why it doesn't make sense, upon which she replies with some fallacy made
of either the misapplied obvious or the obviously wrong - all the while
detailing it as if she were saying some novelty - and one just loses
interest in proceeding (I don't know, maybe she thinks the lack of
replies after a certain point is anything other than sheer boredom).
It's just not worth it. Not only she seems ineducable (again, I don't
know her behaviour elsewhere), she isn't even challenging (no,
ineducability isn't challenging - hopeless generally isn't).

And yet she doesn't seem stupid. Coupled with her assertion of her high
regard for her own discerning abilities, or how she thinks she can judge
the relative merit of a given position just because it is 'explained in
simple language', it may turn out quite simple - she's got intelligence,
but its possibilities are limited by her (much too optimistic) appraisal
of her own ability to make judgements. Here in my country people say
one's not a good judge of one's self. Advice unheeded, intelligence
isn't everything, and even if one's not below average, it will become a
prisoner of itself. She will now giggle and think 'we don't understand'.

Anyway, it's just not worth it.
--
am

laurus : rhodophyta : brezoneg : smalltalk : stargate
.

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