How some misunderstanding happens

[oldernow]

It's tough. By definition, individuals are separate from
all else - especially with respect to their ongoing field
of conceptuality - i.e. mind - which is essentially a
dream taken/believed to be real.

So right off that bat, mutual understanding is crippled
by needing to be mediated by something somewhat common to
disparate conceptuality contexts. That something is spoken
and/or written "words", i.e. re-presentations of thoughts.

I say "crippled", because those words/thoughts are utterly
isolated within the aforementioned individual minds,
their meaning being defined in the context of supporting
words/thoughts present in said individual minds.

The mediation problem: spoken or written words do *not*
carry with them that context!

Sure, one can attempt to provide as much of that context
as possible, but if you think about it, does that really
happening?

Well, how could it? Each word employed to hopefully
deliver the context goods suffers the same inadequacy! Each
means something specific only in its complete supporting
conceptuality context. Once converted, transmitted, and
received, each and every word winds up with the meaning
relative to the receiving context; the transmitting
context is essentially filtered out, replaced by the
receiving context.

Get it? (haha! (laughing at how I'm asking you to
understand the meaning of these words as though in my
conceptuality context, when as I just got done saying,
you'll never have more than your conceptual context
no matter how many agents of mediation - aka words - I
transmit. (In fact, the more words I transmit, the greater
the chance of transmitting a word whose meaning difference
between the transmitter's conceptuality context and the
receiver's conceptual context is sufficiently different to
completely derail any chance of understanding the little
bit of it I wanted you to understand in my conceptuality
context, i.e. "from my point of view")))

But as if that's not challenging enough, there are times
when people use a word in a way obviously contrary to
consensually agreed to definitions (keeping in mind that
nobody understands even those identically, but we do the
best we can).

I came across a good example of that in a gemini post
entitled "anarchy - what I mean when I say it" (one point
of clarification: that's what the link text said, but
the title within the actual post left out the 'anarchy -
" part):

gemini://gemini.thebackupbox.net/~epoch/blog/anarchy

=================================================
| # what I mean when I say it |
| |
| or maybe I should start with what don't mean? |
| |
| I don't mean chaos. |
| I don't mean violence. |
| I don't mean blowing shit up. |
| I do mean no government though. |
| |
| I absolutely mean loving one another. |
| |
| I don't know if this is possible. |
| |
| I hope it is possible. |
| |
| I'm trying. |
=================================================

I mean, c'mon... it's hard enough (per the above) to
understand each other without using a word in what's
*obviously* almost utterly contrary to its consensually
agreed to definition! Doing such is akin to pouring gas
on a fire, and how the house became a smouldering mass
of uselessness....

[oldernow]

On 2024-04-24, oldernow <***@dev.null> wrote:

LOL! What a fantastic omission given this thread is about
misunderstanding!

Post by oldernow
I mean, c'mon... it's hard enough (per the above) to
understand each other without using a word in what's
*obviously* almost utterly contrary to its consensually
agreed to definition! Doing such is akin to pouring gas
on a fire, and how the house became a smouldering mass
of uselessness....
I mean, c'mon... it's hard enough (per the above) to
understand each other without using a word in what's
*obviously* almost utterly contrary to its consensually
agreed to definition! Doing such is akin to pouring gas
on a fire, and *THEN WONDERING* how the house became a
smouldering mass of uselessness....

(the emphasis of "*THEN WONDERING*" purely to highlight its
being missing)

[D]

Post by oldernow
=================================================
| # what I mean when I say it |
| |
| or maybe I should start with what don't mean? |
| |
| I don't mean chaos. |
| I don't mean violence. |
| I don't mean blowing shit up. |
| I do mean no government though. |
| |
| I absolutely mean loving one another. |
| |
| I don't know if this is possible. |
| |
| I hope it is possible. |
| |
| I'm trying. |
=================================================
I mean, c'mon... it's hard enough (per the above) to
understand each other without using a word in what's
*obviously* almost utterly contrary to its consensually
agreed to definition! Doing such is akin to pouring gas
on a fire, and how the house became a smouldering mass
of uselessness....

Amen! I'm all for philosophy, but when you start juggling with
definitions of your own, when you can just open any dictionary and read
the common meaning, it quickly leads to chaos and nothingness.

In that case, I'd much rather have the philosopher make up words, and
define them himself instead of redefining existing words.

Hence my post on consciousness and information earlier tonight, although
consciousness, as regular readers of my messages know, is a tough nut to
crack.

Information theory does tell us a lot about information, so I think when
it comes to discussions about information we are on way more solid
and established ground.

[oldernow]

Post by D
Information theory does tell us a lot about information,
so I think when it comes to discussions about information
we are on way more solid and established ground.

I think I've spent so much time processing information
that I've attained unto PIES (Permanent Information Ennui
Syndrome). :-)

However, I'm suddenly interested in the word 'information'
itself, noting (while reading your response) it seems
possibly more, well, informative :-) written "in-formation".