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Comparative Illusion

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Re: Comparative Illusion

#21

Post by gryn »

BoardsOfCanada wrote: post #17

I don't see how "More people have been to Russia than I have" can initially seem acceptable. I assume it's being parsed as something that makes sense, but what is that? "Many people have been to Russia, but I haven't" or what?

you can parse it as 'I have been to Russia' => integer representing the number of times you've been to Russia.

with the original boolean meaning being a special case, and this being a context-dependent generalization to be inferred by the listener.

---

this kind of sentence would kinda make sense (in the sense of being informative to the reader and not just a tautological statement) if you, for example are a researcher who have access to a native island where most people are forbidden from entering and have been there multiple times since you were given an exemption from the rule.

here is a list of islands you probably wont have access to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

Re: Comparative Illusion

#22

Post by motohagiography »

These remind me of other writing techniques (without names) I use to create surprise, leverage presumptions, structure jokes, and even inject new ideas. If you think of someones train of thought like the staves or horizontal lines in musicial notation, but each line is a layer of attention or abstraction, notes outside those lines aren't obvious, but they have a resonance or dissonance with the base ideas between them, and then a sentence or a paragraph can play over them, creating and resolving tension and leading to the conclusion you had hoped to express. A comparative illusion in this view would be something you would use as a transition, for a change of conecptual key, or to bend the ends of an idea into an loop, inescapable without extra cognitive load, and the mind prefers to accept what it is being presented with instead of epstein didn't kill himself. Comparative illusions can have a very hypnotic and distracting effect, and they are an effective tool of persuasion.

Re: Comparative Illusion

#23

Post by petercooper »

I didn't know the term at the time but I experienced something like this from Karl Pilkington years ago. He was talking about how two examples of a newly discovered species were found at the same time and: "They were discovered the same distance apart from each other."

Re: Comparative Illusion

#25

Post by marginalia_nu »

zevv wrote: post #24
rixed wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try again with -Wall

Too bad language does not come with -Werror

Oh great, split an infinitive and your conversation partner begins a 35 minute monologue

    /usr/include/english/4.6/bits/stl_algo.h:166:4: error: no match for ‘operator==’ in ‘__first.__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator::operator* [with _Iterator = std::vector*, _Container = std::vector >, __gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator::reference = std::vector&]() == __val’
    /usr/include/english/4.6/bits/stl_algo.h:166:4: note: candidates are:
    /usr/include/english/4.6/bits/stl_pair.h:201:5: note: template bool std::operator==(const std::pair&, const std::pair&)
    /usr/include/english/4.6/bits/stl_iterator.h:285:5: note: template bool std::operator==(const std::reverse_iterator&, const std::reverse_iterator&)
    /usr/include/english/4.6/bits/stl_iterator.h:335:5: note: template bool std::operator==(const std::reverse_iterator&, const std::reverse_iterator&)
    /usr/include/english/4.6/bits/allocator.h:122:5: note: template bool std::operator==(const std::allocator&, const std::allocator&)
    /usr/include/english/4.6/bits/allocator.h:127:5: note: template bool std::operator==(const std::allocator&, const std::allocator&)
    /usr/include/english/4.6/bits/stl_vector.h:1273:5: note: template bool std::operator==(const std::vector&, const std::vector&)
    /usr/include/english/4.6/ext/new_allocator.h:123:5: note: template bool __gnu_cxx::operator==(const __gnu_cxx::new_allocator&, const __gnu_cxx::new_allocator&)
    /usr/include/english/4.6/bits/stl_iterator.h:805:5: note: template bool __gnu_cxx::operator==(const __gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator&, const __gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator&)
    /usr/include/english/4.6/bits/stl_iterator.h:799:5: note: template bool __gnu_cxx::operator==(const __gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator&, const __gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator&)
    /usr/include/english/4.6/bits/stl_algo.h:170:4: error: no match for ‘operator==’ in ‘__first.__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator::operator* [with _Iterator = std::vector*, _Container = std::vector >, __gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator::reference = std::vector&]() == __val’
    /usr/include/english/4.6/bits/stl_algo.h:170:4: note: candidates are:
    /usr/include/english/4.6/bits/stl_pair.h:201:5: note: template bool std::operator==(const std::pair&, const std::pair&)
    /

Re: Comparative Illusion

#26

Post by woliveirajr »

josephcsible wrote: post #6

I don't understand how "In Michigan and Minnesota, more people found Mr Bush's ads negative than they did Mr Kerry's." is an example of this. To me, that unambiguously parses like this: peopleInMichiganAndMinnesota.filter(foundMrBushsAdsNegative).length() > peopleInMichiganAndMinnesota.filter(foundMrKerrysAdsNegative).length()

And, for me (non-native and barely-speaker), comments like yours raise the real point: it seems that the "problem" is kind of nitpicking the words of the sentence. People just listen-and-correct (or read-and-correct) considering that there was good faith from the author, not that it was created to be non-parseable.
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