What if everyone were literal thinkers

Post Reply New Topic

I got a interesting PM about it. My buddy here told me the more abstract thinker you are, the more vague you are. He told me words can have multiple meanings and each meaning has different ways to apply that meaning and I said gosh now wonder there are so many misunderstandings.

Do you think if everyone were concrete and literal, would there be a lot less misunderstandings?

I'm kind of into words so I'm more likely to already know a word could have different meanings in different contexts. I also like colloquial phrases and the history and origin of them. If I take someone literally it's that I can't tell if they are kidding or not. Which is I guess a body language-tone of voice thing. If it's deadpan I have a hard time telling which is ironic because I'm pretty deadpan myself.

I couldn't disagree more. I am somewhat literal, hyper-analytical, and abstract. That's why I like programming.

Vagueness comes from emotional/subjective thinking. People who are just literal are poor at lateral thinking and objective reasoning. We would be in the dark-ages if it was just them, around. The emotional side regulates the rational side. I am emotionally impaired so I can’t ever stop analysing things. It drives me nuts. There was a study the showed those who had brain injuries to the emotional side of the brain can’t make up their minds when posed with a choice, it is an endless loop.



No it would be a nightmare; there would be so many more misunderstandings.

0_equals_true, I'm the guy who said this. I'm her buddy.

Unless I'm misunderstanding definitions of concrete and abstract I'm going to have to disagree with your disagreement. I'm going to have to give examples as to why.

I'm going to use this guy's defintion of the word ret*d.
""I use the word ret*d correctly, in that it is a mental or physical condition caused by lack of growth or genetic abnormality." Belcher's definition of ret*d. "

1. Here is an example of a physical condition casued by genetic abnormality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertrichosis#Genetic
Is this a ret*d in Belcher's eyes? What if this person had an 180 IQ or 100 IQ?

2. What about dwarfism? Isn't that a physical condition caused by a genetic abnormality?

Here is another example: You're entitled to nothing and you have to earn everything you get.
I have heard this phrase before and it is so vague and abstract. Here is why.
1. This means I'm not entitled commit murder and I would have to earn the right to commit murder.
2. This means I'm not entitled not to commit murder and I would have to earn the right not to commit murder.
3. This means I'm not entitled to have what I have already earned. I would have to earn what I earned. This would be an infinite progression
4. It also means I'm not entitled to not have what I already earned.

5. Am I entitled to being entitled?

Tantybi did explain this awhile back to me and it pertains to being provided a living. If one did not know this do you see how vague it can become?







I can't stop analyzing things as well. I'm in an endless loop as well. I know what you're talking about. I've been told many times I over analyze things. I do not know how to stop. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the meaning of the word literal?



No it would be a nightmare; there would be so many more misunderstandings.[/quote]

Please Explain, I could be missing data. I have to go by the fact, I know nothing and I know that I nothing. I am ignorant and aware of my ignorance.

I disagree too. Mathematics, for instance, uses highly abstract concepts and language, but, if done properly, there isn't a thing in the world less ambiguous or vague than mathematical statements.

As for your second point, I also have my doubts about that one. I've observed time and again that people use non-literal language to speed up their conversations, often with great efficiency. If everything had to spelled out literally, it would in many cases take ages (non-literal language!) to even get the most trivial points across. For example: what is easier to say and understand? "Please don't go overboard with that girl," or "I urge you not to display during your appointment with that girl any behavior which would transgress the boundaries of what is normally considered socially acceptable in the contemporary American courtship process." I know, this example is over the top, but do you get the point? If we all had to speak like that, we would end up with more verbosity than ever, and proportionally less time to actually do things.

Totally besides the point. In giving "informal" definitions people often say things like, "An A is a B with properties C and D." What they actually mean by this, is: "If X is an A, then X is a B with properties C and D." Logically, the converse doesn't follow however. Example: when I asked my mother, a long time ago, what an owl is, she said, "An owl is a big bird of prey which is awake at night." Did she mean that every bird of prey which is awake at night is an owl? Of course not. Was she foolish not to give me an exact definition of an owl? I think not. She probably couldn't even have done that, as her knowledge of birds, like mine, is rather limited. You see, giving exact definitions of things or concepts is really hard, and you might end up with definitions so convoluted as to be totally useless in daily life. Besides, definitions always depend on other definitions, leading to an infinite regress, or on so-called "primitive notions", which suffer from the defect that they may very well be misunderstood just as easily as the definitions of concepts which they are used for.

There are fewer misunderstandings when people say what they mean and mean what they say while speaking in ways listeners actually can understand. The issue here is definition, interpretation and even translation, not manners of thinking.

I understand what you're saying but I wasn't thinking of the converse at all. Yes, you're right we end up in an infinite regression. I do have a question for you? Why is it that I can do this regression so easily and I have difficulty stopping?

I'm going to add more to properties C and D. Why can't there more than one different version of C and more than one different version of D.

C can have sub-properties c1,c2,c3 and another version of C can have c5,c2,c7. D can have D2,D4,D9 and it can also have D2, D5,D9. This can go for infinite like you said.

By the way, there is a case in which the converse and the implication are logically equivalent. It is based upon the law of identity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_identity

Try this. "If A, then A." A is logically equivalent with A no matter what truth operator we use. Am I correct? Since I found an exception to the converse being logically equivalent then it is non-true that the converse is always non-logically equivalent with implication. If I'm wrong then could I say that there is no converse?

Last edited by cubedemon6073 on 11 Jan 2010, 9:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

If your sentence, "The issue here is definition, interpretation and even translation, not manners of thinking." is true then can any human being truly say what they mean?

I think if everybody were concrete and literal, there'd be fewer misunderstandings when I was dealing with them. But I suppose the non-literal stuff must have evolved for a reason....maybe in some ways it's a better method of communication, though it's hard for me to imagine a situation in which it wouldn't be a lot easier if the communicator just told me straight what they wanted me to know. I guess the non-literal stuff can be more interesting or it may convey the meaning more effectively. There's a lot of creativity and beauty in figurative speech.

Somehow it reminds me of Zen......the way they never write a book that just explains what they're on about clearly and logically. They say that the student can't grasp the essence of Zen that way, because an intellectual answer doesn't impinge on the mind strongly enough.

Actually I spend a lot of my talking time not really knowing if I'm joking or not.

I'm also convinced that deities and religious scripture only have much truth in an allegorical sense - once I'd realised the validity of allegorical truth, my respect for religious stuff went up a lot.

Sure, but that does not address the matter of what is heard. I had wanted to post a quotation I cannot now find ... and it said something to the effect of good communication (as in what is intended actually being heard) first being dependent upon a common understanding of words being used. No good example comes to mind at the moment, but you just experienced one if we have a common understanding of "example" and "mind" ... and you might even see the irony of that development taking place as I typed!

There would be less misunderstandings, but at a big cost. Poetry and songs will go down the pan, first of all.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with being literal, I'm literal myself sometimes, but I don't want the whole world to think like that.

There would be even more misunderstandings. If you read between the lines of a vague comment, there are a lot of givens which you pick up on based on who the person is, what that person believes in, how that person behaves, etc. So in a normal conversation, you don't need to be that detailed since you can fill all the blanks.

If everyone was extremely literal, there would be non-stop arguments over semantics. Not only that, but all the obvious givens would have to be pointed out, making conversations long-winded and draining. It's supposed to be a conversation, not a lawyer reading my rights.

@0_equals_true: You have a link to that article? I'm not asking you for proof on anything, I'm just interesting in reading it.

...

Last edited by Willard on 11 Jan 2010, 10:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hmm. I guess everyone was wrong, and I'm not literal at all.

English is an odd language in that it contain puns, which are based on different possible interpretations. Some languages - like Loglan/Lobjan - do contain the ability for misunderstandings, but it's glaringly obvious when they are there.

The best thing is to go with the most probable answer, in that case. In the example of 'don't go overboard with that girl', it contains multiple meanings. If you're on a boat, and you're not courting her, and you're standing by the edge, the most probable meaning would be the most literal. If you're nowhere near somewhere that you can go 'overboard' in the most literal sense of the word, the most probable meaning is different. Of course, in some occasions, someone will use a pun, and mean both.

So, as long as the people were also logical, there would be no problem.

Why did I get the eerie feeling I was writing like a certain author who operates under a pseudonym just then? Is it because I'd read his book 'Horseradish: bitter truths you can't avoid'?

You are demonstrating the problem with the lack of abstract thinking. Abstract thinking is the basis for logical deduction. Sometimes you don't have all the information so you have to work out what is inferred. The assumption that if everyone is literal minded they would all understand each other is unfounded. You can only convey a limited amount of information within a statement. Abstract reasoning is a skill, people incorrectly think it has to do with subjectivity and vagueness when it fact it is about getting the message across, overtime conventions will be established.

ret*d simply means to slow, it is used in a variety of contexts to denote different things. As far as developmental retardation it needn't be genetic. However much of retardation is congenital (not the same as inherited). As Willard says as a noun it is rarely used these days. The IQ of 70 cut off is completely arbitrary, I wish people actually realised this or it wouldn’t have ended up in legislature.

The second is just a poor phrase. You can rephrase the statement to “You are not entitled to what you haven’t earned” or “You are not entitled to take anything for free”. There are a number of socio-political arguments about whether the things people ‘earn’ really belong to them, and what constitutes earning, but I will stick to the original message first. ‘Nothing’ is referring to automatic entitlement. The inference is entitlement is contrasted with earning so they don’t contradict, which I agree is problematic. You made a number of logical fallacies in your deductions but despite that made valid points. However the purpose of this statement is to communicate something, so logically you would consider what would likely be the case. In reality the statement is really about people’s desire to hold onto what they have got, and defend this on the premise of having earned it.


If you are totally concrete and literal you are a very black and white thinker and incapable of more than base deductions, which means your logic barely scratches the surface. Black and white thinkers hold the belief they are very logical and there opinion is absolute truth because what they 'witness' must be true, when in fact logic requires work, it reveals many unknowns, you can't know everything and you aren't always right.