The Glade 4.0

Lets all kill ourselves right now.

_________________
"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Can I have ur stuff?

You no take candle!

The three of you can act haughty all you want, RangerDave knows what he said and what he intended, which isn't anything close to the interpretation you three are spouting now that he was called on his position.

_________________

This is like 3rd grade on the playground all over again...except with bigger words, hahaha!
Seriously, ya'll lost me a page or two ago with all your bickering.
I'm with Wwen. Pass the damn koolaid.

_________________
"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

LOL, except that how Arathain and I understand it, IS what he intended based on his clarifications.

Now, it's entirely possible that how he phrased things was confusing to you or that you were unclear about his meaning from the context of the rest of the thread, his posting history, etc. But instead of asking for clarification, or using the time honored method of repeating back to him what you thought he was saying, you decided to go all English Prof ******* on us and begin to lecture us on sentence structure and how terrible we are at the English language.

In short, you're being an ******* and trying to change the argument from the topic at hand to some bullshit about symantics so that you can win teh intarwebs.

I think the point Khross is trying to make is that one should know the language well enough to say what they mean.

_________________
"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Except for the fact that RangerDave consistently contradicts the reading you're suggesting is correct in this very thread? Here's another post from RangerDave supporting my reading:But, you know ... how many times does he have to shoot himself in the foot before his assertion that he meant something else is indefensible?

Elmo:

As evidenced by the original post and his subsequent posts on the issue at hand, he did say what he meant: exactly what I'm accusing him of saying.

_________________

But he doesn't dude.

What he's saying is that there are tons of factors that go into one's success. The willingness to work hard is only one of those factors. There are millions if not billions of people in the world who work hard every day, many much harder than any of us on these forums. And many of them are not anywhere near as successful as we are.

Why?

Because of all those factors that are BEYOND YOUR CONTROL.

As Arathain said:



You keep quoting my comments about factors 1-5 as evidence that I don't believe in factor 6. But this logical error of yours has been pointed out multiple times now, and you haven't addressed it. Instead, you followed your usual m.o. and retreated into grammatical pedantry. /yawn Bored now.

Pfft! I used big words in 3rd grade playground arguments. Which, now that I think about it, might be why I got into so many fights back then.

Aizle:

Except, that's not what RangerDave is saying. See, if RD had said:You'd be right. But he did not and continues not to make that statement. Of course, the sentence probably should have been written like this to mean what you want it to say:

_________________

I read it as hes stating that individual effort has zero to do with how one does in our society because of that web of factors - which alludes to the fact that even one's own personal differences are not "individual effort" in his mind.

_________________
"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

RangerDave:

You keep stating Arathain's "factor 6" has no impact on outcome; indeed, you keep stating that outcome is a result of all other factors in the equation. You've stated as much 3 times in this thread. Indeed, Aizle just stated an almost synonymous position: success is primarily the result of factors beyond individual control. There's no logical errors in my post, especially not when one "finds virtue in the mean."

_________________

Which I believe reflects your own prejudiced view of me, rather than the most plausible reading of my statement.

Here's what I actually wrote:


Here's what I meant:


However, because you seem to think I'm a closet communist, you're inserting the word "entirely" instead:


Could I have explicitly included the word "partially" or used some legalese like "factors including, but not limited to, the following"? Sure, but I submit that virtually no one (indeed, not even a genuine communist) thinks personal effort is completely irrelevant to one's financial success, so the former reading (i.e. what I meant) is the obvious common sense one, while the latter (i.e. what you understood) is very implausible. Explicitly including the word "partially" should not have been necessary. Also, even if there was genuine confusion, as Aizle pointed out, a simple request for clarification/confirmation would have sufficed to straighten it out.

At any rate, like I said before, I'm bored of the meta-argument on this. Let it be known far and wide that I do in fact believe personal effort is a major factor in determining one's success in life, particularly when success is measured relative to others in the same country and historical period. I just don't believe it's the whole story.

Unlike most other languages, English is deliciously ambiguous. This makes it relatively easy to not say what you mean.

_________________
Memento Vivere

I have local knowledge.
That sandbar was not there yesterday!

RangerDave:

Actually, you included an absolute with use of the idiom "nothing whatsoever" ... No one needs to add "entirely" before dependent, because you used an absolute exclusion later in the sentence.

_________________

I forgot, is Elmo cheering on the upcoming societal collapse or the sanity-level at the Glade? Either way I'd like butter on my popcorn please.

_________________

Actually, going back to the original topic of societal collapse, I wonder if there were similar public fears and predictions of imminent collapse/disaster in Britain when the British Empire was in the early stages of its decline.

Amusingly, this axiom is still true:The Commonwealth still spans every time zone on the planet.

_________________

Not completely, but for the most part I agree. However, that's irrelevant to the argument that was made. The argument was that if you succeed, you owe a debt to that social system. No one claimed we all didn't have access to it.

Just for clarification, I only minimally agree with RD's point. How that "debt" is defined and distributed is where I am guessing we'll completely disagree.

Ok, and he's right so far.



Yes, it does.



No. This is where you fail. It depends on factors that have nothing whatsoever to do with your personal efforts. He made no exclusive statement. There's nothing there that says it can't ALSO depend on other factors.



That's good advice. You should take it.

Meh, I can buy that. The only hang up on that is that you are sort of paying for the service after the fact, if you succeed enough to aford it. I have issues with that, but that's a whole other point.

Aizle originally put up that argument in this thread, to which I responded with an explanation of how taxation and individual contribution to the government would work. But, the "social system" and "government" are not synonymous, which vacates any equation of taxation and debts to the social system.

_________________

See, I don't think you should owe a "debt" for such things as dumb luck. Your "debt" should be limited to what you were provided by other tax payers. (roads, schools, etc)