I also hate talking about myself directly and am wondering why I brought this up...

@Jon - no worries, we can discuss something else if you'd prefer.

I had expected Vitaly to respond to my earlier remark about Huntsman spiders.

@DavidWallace That’s your preference, and you’re more than entitled.

@Vit: I was thinking of you tonight at this party I was at. There was a large fireplace-like thing in the middle of the hall. It was like an open plateau with a wood fire on it, but also a chimney with what I think was a strong fan, or some other kind of suction device. And the ceiling was extremely high (a former factory). Still, I could smell the smoke if I stood close to the thing.

@DavidWallace It’s fine. I just don’t like to hijack the topic unduly.

@JonPurdy Haha, yes, judging by your politeness here, you would probably be all right. I was rather speaking theoretically.

@JonPurdy I find it interesting.

No, from polite people, the forwardness can be worse, because of its unexpectedness.

@DavidWallace Oh, sorry. I had nothing to say about that. I still don't!

Clearly.

@DavidWallace Yes, but the main reason is that it is usually extremely awkward for shy people to do that.

And, if a shy person is forward to you, and you need to disappoint (and hurt) her, that sucks.

But, if somehow this laid-back person is confident, it is better.

@Cerberus would have been easier if they had declared Crocker's rules, eh?

God, sobriquet is not a word you get to use a lot.

@Vitaly You can declare those rules, but you can't stop feeling hurt, miserable, and with dashed hopes.

@JonPurdy Hahaha, but why would your sobriquet or nickname be Why?

@Vitaly - Nothing to be sorry for. Me bringing it up was an attempt to change the subject, since Jon had expressed a wish not to be talking about himself. But then continued talking about himself, so the whole spider thing is irrelevant.

Heh.

@Cerberus see, that's the beauty of Crocker's rules (as opposed to the usual “go ahead” thing you were defending a few months ago): they are mostly known on LW and in related circles, so if someone who knows about them declares them, you can be confident they are disciplined enough not to actually feel hurt :PPP

@Cerberus Disagree!

A shy person is more likely to be perceived as sincere, which is more embarrassing for the target of the remark than it would be from someone who makes forward remarks to everyone.

@Cerberus while the “go ahead” (which essentially means the same) is more likely to be invoked by someone who could actually be hurt

@DavidWallace You know, sometimes when a shy, awkward person declares romantic interest through some subtle joke that I am meant to pick up, I just ignore it, because I can't deal with it. I pretend I didn't get it. It is a bit rude, but I am just nonplussed if I don't expect it.

@Vitaly I strongly doubt whether you could suppress such strong feelings. You can make them a bit weaker by rationally deflating them, but still.

@Cerberus “whyevernotso” is my username on YouTube, which comes from a time I was feeling good and said “why ever not?” in response to someone asking why, and is also subtly a spoof on “charlieissocoollike” (famed videoblogger) and “Why the lucky stiff” (famed programmer).

Because it embarrasses you to acknowledge your attractiveness, or because you think that answering them honestly may be more harmful to them than not answering?

@Cerberus or you could be rational and declare the rules when you know in advance you are not susceptible to regular human emotions

@Vitaly - what?? He or she is not an alien!

@DavidWallace That may be part of it too, I do not disagree; but why don't you feel that the awkwardness makes it worse? It has happened to me that someone awkward finally mustered the courage after months, and I felt like I could die.

@DavidWallace i was thinking more like ASPD

and that was the generic “you”, as in “one”

and even with the regular pronoun, he's a dog!

@Vitaly So you mean invoking Crocker's rules guarantees not only that you will not hold a grudge your interlocutor, but also that you will not experience negative emotions as a result?

@Vitaly. Sorry, I don't know what ASPD is. And even if "you" means "one", what "one" is not susceptible to regular human emotions?

@JonPurdy Ohh I see! Some complicated intertextuality there.

I think it's safe to assume that the entity known here as "Cerberus" is not in fact a three-headed dog who has magically learnt to type.

@Cerberus no, it doesn't guarantee, just as saying “go ahead, i won't be offended” doesn't guarantee it, but the place those rules come from gives you a high likelihood that the person who invokes them knows what he's doing

@DavidWallace It is just avoiding short-term suffering: I don't respond now, I don't have to suffer through the knowledge of their hurt now.

@DavidWallace antisocial personality disorder, sociopathy

@DavidWallace Careful, that assumption is fraught with peril.

@Vitaly Sure, if that is true, then why not invoke them? But have you ever experienced a broken heart, if you will permit me this metaphor?

@Cerberus Awkwardness resulting from your lack of interest in the person, or awkwardness resulting from your unwillingness to acknowledge your own attractiveness (assuming that you're not, in fact, a three-headed dog)?

@Vitaly Antisocial people are almost always quite charming, and most of the time you’d never know they were lying till they were to kill you.

@JonPurdy Yes, I know.

@Vitaly In that case, what difference does it make? Speaking pragmatically, if you can’t tell the difference, then it’s not your problem till you’re actually being stabbed.

@Cer, Sorry, I think I misread your question, and I'm not sure whether mine makes sense now. I'll try again to be coherent.

I’m getting off topic here.

@Vitaly I think it guarantees that he thinks he can "handle" the emotions, but he will still experience them to some degree. Unless indeed he is a true stoic, but then he would indeed have to have that abbreviation you mentioned. So I might say things that were normally hurtful to such a person if I knew exactly how and why he would be immune to the emotions. Otherwise the fact that he would still be hurt would inhibit me, even if he declares he is willing to accept the hurt.

@DavidWallace Lack of interest. The other thing is trivial in comparison.

@JonPurdy Now, now, antisocial doesn't mean homicidal or aggressive.

This.

@Cer, great! That changes my attitude somewhat.

It just means you experience certain emotions related to social interaction differently, I think?

It's not hard to imagine that some antisocial humans might make a game out of being rational, trying to save humanity, etc, etc.

@Vitaly Heh, I know. Just making bad jokes.

Exactly.

Even though they still perceive other humans as pieces of furniture.

Because that kind of game is much more satisfying than killing someone. :P

Besides, I think someone who was 100 % antisocial would not converse with others in his spare time.

It is illogical.

@Cerberus — Why not? antisocial ≠ asocial.

You could converse with others for the sake of playing the game.

And for the sake of using the others. E.g. for practising your English.

Unlikely.

I don't believe one word of that.

Hah!

Mildly anti-social people can very well be self-deceptive and think they are doing certain things for one reason while in fact they are doing it for another. Or they might overestimate how "emotional" social contact is for normally social people.

Besides, how is anti-social defined?

@Cerberus or their raw computing power might just allow them to deceive others into thinking they are closer to them on the normality spectrum quite well (one of the reasons homicidal sociopaths are more well-known, homicide isn't a game you need a high IQ for, so those are caught more often)

@DavidWallace Hmm how does it change your attitude, then?

@Vitaly That is more or less internally inconsistent.

If you're anti-social, you can't understand how normal behaviour works, so you can't fake it. If you could, you would posses considerable social skills and not be anti-social.

@Cer - might make me less shy of complimenting attractive people, at least if they know I'm not interested.

If you can apply this "raw power" to social behaviour, then you're social.

@Cerberus You overestimate how difficult it is to fake social interaction. And you also make the erroneous assumption that antisocial people are unpopular or outcasts. They’re usually the center of attention thanks to their puppeteering skills.

^ This.

@DavidWallace Oh, yes, if it someone who I know is not romantically interested, it is of an entirely different order. Of course it can still be awkward, but much, much less so.

Plus, being truly social is like having a FPU for doing float arithmetic, being antisocial is like lacking the circuits and having to consciously emulate it on a regular ALU

“Antisocial people do it in fixed-point.”

@JonPurdy Well, sure, it's easy to fake social interaction in general. But other people know that, and they will not draw any conclusions from that. But, if it's deep social interaction, and playing it convincingly, it is extremely complicated. Like with your man or wife.

@Vitaly I don't know what those abbreviations mean, but I don't think a general computer metaphor is appropriate.

@Cerberus i think it's appropriate. there's an evolutionarily built-in circuit in most people that computes the social interaction subconsciously and efficiently

so that you don't even notice it

you always know when to wave your hand, when to make an extemporaneous gesture, when to smirk, etc

you don't even notice that you are doing it

@Cerberus It’s really not all that complicated when you’re not psychoemotionally involved. Telling a lie is just as easy as telling the truth because your mind gives you no embarrassment nor shame about it.

And as a former compulsive liar, let me say that it’s also pretty easy to fabricate memories so you barely even know that you’re lying.

The mind is a wondrous thing.

That, for example, you have to notice other people doing

@Vitaly I do notice, and it is mostly conscious actions. How would a anti-social person even know how natural it feels for a normal person?

@Cerberus — They won't. But they will observe and learn to mimic it.

@JonPurdy But the more complicated the lie becomes, the harder.

@Cerberus not really, no

Sounds a little like AI

@Vitaly The deeper the emotion that drives it, the more involuntary a social action becomes. But the great, great majority of social actions come with little emotion.

@Cerberus I guess so, but you can also rely on the fact that people have poor memories. You only need to keep a lie going for as long as the victim is paying attention to it, and it’s easy to distract a person away from the appearances you’re too lazy to keep up.

@Vitaly How can you learn if you can't understand it?

@Cerberus you can understand it given enough raw computing power...

@Vitaly Yes, it does: you need to create an ever-expanding complex of lies to keep it up.

Hey, @Mahnax; sorry I didn't answer your question earlier, I was AFK.

@Cerberus not really, with most people, you can tell contradictory lies, people won't remember anyway, and even if they do, they will subconsciously think that the other person spends a lot of effort therefore they must be genuine

@JonPurdy Perhaps; but, if you're anti-social and the other person is not, and you're trying to mimick deep social interaction, you are at a great, great disadvantage.

@DavidWallace Ei se heitä mitään.

@Vitaly Then you can also be social.

@Cerberus it's like calling a CPU naturally capable of doing float arithmetic if the CPU emulates it on an ALU

Does that mean you and I are Finnished?

It just means that it doesn't matter.

@Vitaly Isn't the leading theory that the reason the human brain has become so big is that it was needed for the social interaction we used?

Not sure if I spelled "heitä" correctly, because Google Translate is giving me something about throwing.

@Vitaly Yes.

@Cerberus yes.

GT gave me some nonsense which I could make sense of.

but that's more about memory and figuring out what the other intelligent agent thinks, not sociality per se

I had meant to ask you though, how "sorry" differs between American speech and Canadian speech.

chimps are damn well social, for example!

Kind of continuing from the conversation we were having with simchona.

@DavidWallace Well, Canadians are known for overusing it, (sorry about that, by the way), and Simchona claims that she pronounces it differently.

@Vitaly Then two things follow: 1. it is unlikely that people exist with no social instincts at all; it is rather that a smaller deviation soon becomes visible. And 2. if such a person existed, how could he possibly emulate by far the most complex web of calculations and specialized circuitry in the brain?

She says saw-ry while I say sore-ry.

LOL.

How precise.

See, I pronounce "saw" and "sore" identically. So that means nothing to me.

Huh, I suppose you would.

@Vitaly There social structures are far less complex, I believe.

@Vitaly What's the difference?

@Cerberus but their social emotions are not

Unless the following word starts with a vowel.

Haha, that reminds me of French.

@Cerberus in the sociality as in social emotions

No, it's a very common feature of non-North-American English.

"Use the feminine possessive adjective when the word is feminine, unless it starts with a vowel".

that's probably a very small part of the brain that produces those pesky hormones

Or, I guess I should say non-rhotic English.

I'm not sure I understand that distinction. "Emotions" are not some isolated area in the brain.

And I did not know that rule in French.

so it can become disabled without damaging the intelligence a lot

@DavidWallace Parlez-vous le français?

@Vitaly And without damaging the ability of assessing social situations?

@Cerberus not sure about that

Empathy is at the core of social interaction and assessment.

@Mahnax Ici on parle anglais. :P

Je suis allee a une ecole ou le Francais etait obligatoire; mais maintenant, j'ai oublie beaucoup.

in any case, i'm kinda tired of this (and we've had this discussion before, haven't we?), so, if you will excuse me, i'm gonna have my breakfast

@JonPurdy Nein, man spricht hier Niederländisch!

AFK.

@JonPurdy Not always.

@Vitaly You are absolved! Adios!

@DavidWallace Ahh, ce n'est pas mal.

And I don't know how to type accented characters here; nor can I be bothered copy-pasting them from another application.

@Cerberus 不对，我们在这儿说中文！

@JonPurdy Aaarggg...

@JonPurdy Ja minä haluan puhu suomea!

So, @Mahnax, how would you explain to someone who pronounces "saw" and "sore" identically what the difference between an American "sorry" and a Canadian "sorry" is?

@DavidWallace If you ever want an easy solution, consult me. Autohotkey can solve your problems in a jiffy.

@DavidWallace Hmm.

I have no idea.

@Mahnax Uh, vorbim aici română? I’m running out of languages.

@DavidWallace It's probably something like /sɔːri/ v. /sɔri/.

I think the only answer is for me to listen to a Canadian saying sorry, and an American saying sorry, and try to hear the difference.

Io non parlo Italiano.

@Cer - so you mean it's only the length that's different?

Ja govorim bosanski jezik.

@JonPurdy Ack. Lemme see... Пущка.

@DavidWallace It should be the length of the vowel and/or the length of the r, and/or the insertion of a schwa. I think.

@DavidWallace Probably. I'm no expert on pronunciation or linguistics; heck, I just started English 10.

At quis vestrum Latine loqui potest?

@DavidWallace That is, going by the way Mahnax explained it. It could of course be ɔ v. o.

Oh, no, I used "have" instead of "of"!

I didn't think that was the kind of mistake I would make.

@Mahnax Tutaj mówimy polski...Mówię trochę język rosyjski, ale jestem polski.

@JonPurdy :(

(Was too lazy to switch to a Russian keyboard to type anything in Russian.)

I'm trying to remember a conversation I had with an American man, who questioned what he had read - namely that "law" and "lore" are pronounced identically in NZ English. He said - "But that can't possibly be right; one of them is LAW and the other is LORE". Which in his accent sounded different. I think I may be able to remember the difference, but I'm not sure.

Or Ukrainian?

Ouchi, legômen Hellenika!

@DavidWallace Oh, I'm sure you remember.

Surely you know what a general American accent sounds like?

But neither sounded like what I think the "o" phonetic symbol is supposed to be.

Hmm isn't lore like /loər/?

Well, yes, but that doesn't mean that I can tell you, without hearing it, which exact sound lives in which exact American word.

No. I pronounce "lore" as lɔ.

No, but, I mean the r should be clear enough? I'm sure about the other things either.

Except for exceptional cases like tomato.

@DavidWallace I know: I meant in American.

I only pronounce the R if the next word begins with a vowel.

OED suggests /lɔe/ for British, /lɔer/ American.

Oh, no, I think he said lɔR.

Or lɔr.

I didn't detect a separate shwa.

But that doesn't mean he didn't say one.

Possibly his accent wasn't typical of Americans.

Oh, yes, I am using the general r, not the exact kind of r/ɹ/ʀ.

And British "lore" has a separate e sound? I find this a bit hard to believe.

I always find it hard to tell.

I am currently crafting an educational video.

For us??

Yes.

Maybe just for me!

Yay!

No, he said for me toooo!

It's for everyone.

Hmm can't you just make it for us?

Now I feel less special. Can you imagine how poor David must feel?

I just keep thinking of that episode of How I Met Your Mother. The one where Marshall and Robyn go to that bar where everyone is making fun of Canadians; so Robyn pretends not to be one.

@Cerberus It's for everyone here, I mean.

Now I'm just waiting for it to process.

There y'all are.

Yayy!

It's only 16 seconds long, but it should suffice.

I hope.

I'll have to listen to it later; my wife is watching a movie on TV.

Haha cool!

But thanks for making the effort of doing this. Much appreciated.

You pronounce it very clearly.

Thank you.

Does it help?

So it seems you are using a different vowel in saw and sore.

My American friend definitely did this.

Yes, though I'm not quite there yet.

Let me look at some IPA stuff and see if I can't figure it out.

Your vowel in saw sounds almost like /ɑ/.

denounces IPA as tomfoolery, resumes pointless arrangements of normal letters

Or rather /ʌ/.

Hehe.

Star'd.

Merci!

Yes! I think /ɑ/ is what Matt (American) said.

Haha.

But IPA can be so extremely useful!

So he had /lɑ/ and /lɔR/ for "law" and "lore".

@Mahnax Whom?

@DavidWallace Yes, yes, it's all coming back to me.

@Mahnax Oh, I see. What is that for?

Wait a second.

Pundit has nothing to do with chat.

That was one of the Gaming.SE hats, I remember now.

@DavidWallace I think /lɑ/ is far more extreme than what Mahnax does: I do recognize it now, and it sounds very rural American to me.

OK, I've just listened to Mahnax's vid. Sounds very similar to what my friend Matt said, regardless of which phonetic symbol you use for the vowel in "saw".

Perhaps what Mahnax uses is /ɒ/?

I have [ɑ] (I think?) in “sorry”, but it’s not quite the same vowel as in what I think of as a Canadian accent. Can’t quite put my finger on the difference though. Also I don’t merge “cot” and “caught”, for what it’s worth.

Arg, American is so complicated!

Let's all use the NZ accent from now on.

Why don't y'all just learn RP, goddammit!

Oh, yeah, I always get /ɒ/ and /ɑ/ confused.

I have been accused of speaking RP. I think the accent of a well-educated NZer may be very similar to RP; except of course for the short i.

@Mahnax I bet two neighbouring sheep farms in NZ are mutually unintelligible!

@Cerberus Haha, fine.

Then let us all talk like me!

@Cerberus - untrue, sorry.

@DavidWallace Hmm much closer than an American accent is to RP, that's for shoa.

@DavidWallace Yeah I was just kidding.

There's very little difference between NZ accents. Apart from the deep south where it's rhotic.

Oh, no!

Not rhotic!

@Cerberus I can put on any accent I like, but RP just isn’t thrilling enough for me to want to use it regularly.

It's actually kind of cute, the way people from Invercargill speak

@JonPurdy Hmmm why not? What makes an accent thrilling?

@DavidWallace Is it like Irish? Scottish?

Wait, Inver- sounds Scottish?

Imagine RP, but with shwa for a short i; and with rhotic R.

Hmm how come everybody in NZ is so close to RP, while most of England is not?

Umm, yeah, southern NZ was originally settled by Scots, so the place names sound Scottish (except for the Maori ones). But they don't speak much like Scots anymore.

Well, the r?

@Cerberus I dunno, if it’s physically fun to put on. I like me a good Cork, Dublin, Liverpool, or Edinburgh, but I’m hard pressed to care all that much about, like, Leeds and Cardiff. Even Perth isn’t very exciting.

@Cerberus because most of NZ was settled by well educated Britishers who had the means to come here in the 19th century.

And the "aye, lad"?

And I like Australian and New Zealand accents as a general rule.

@DavidWallace And did those educated Brits mostly speak RP? Did RP even exist then?

Ooh, sounds like you've seen the Speights ads.

I'm going to bed, it is past 1:00 AM and I have a 7 hour shift today. Good night, all.

@JonPurdy Hmm oh...I'm afraid I don't know those accents well enough.

@Cerberus - I think you might be asking questions that it's beyond my expertise to answer.

@Mahnax Night!

@DavidWallace OK. I was mainly just rambling anyway.

And I don't know where the deep southern R comes from.

@Mahnax thanks again for the vid. Good night.

From Scottish would be the most obvious origin, but...

Perth is interesting. They don't sound like other Aussies to me.

Know this guy?

He is pretty funny.

They have the tight i, but not the corrupted ay.

Does 24 accents.

@Cer, yeah, he lives in the next street to me.

But he probably won't get the non-British accents very well.

@DavidWallace Really? He didn't tell me he'd moved to the other side of the globe.

@Cerberus Yes, of course. Interesting that they don't have other Scottish characteristics in their speech, as far as I can tell.

Hmm perhaps those disappeared first?

And NZers are sensitive about being asked if they know other NZers. We travel somewhere overseas, confess to being NZer, and are immediately asked "oh, NZ! Do you know so-and-so?". There are 4.5 million people here! However, it's remarkable how often the answer is actually yes!

Hah, his GA was pretty good, but “take the piss” ruined it.

Again, I'll have to listen later. Wife still watching movie in the same room with me.

@JonPurdy Haha, yes, and he knows it.

@DavidWallace It is the same with Holland, and we have thrice as many people.

@Cerberus Still, one of the better accent videos I’ve seen, overall.

@DavidWallace Alas, he doesn't do NZ.

@JonPurdy Yeah, I agree. Though I suppose someone who actually speaks an accent can always tell.

Well, of course. Maybe that's why I found Anthony Hopkins' accent in Fastest Indian odd.

@Jon What's GA?

@Cerberus Dunno about that. Usually where people mess up when it comes to accent imitation is overgeneralisation due to insufficient knowledge of specifics. They take a word, say “unconscious” like he says in his Glasgowish bit, and don’t know offhand that the first [k] sound needs to be labialised (though perhaps not as much as he does), so they say it like they’re English, and it’s a giveaway.

@DavidWallace General American, or as he called it, “US American - general accent”.

@JonPurdy Right, but isn't that compatible with my statement? If you don't speak it yourself naturally, there will always be some specifics that you mess up, some tiny details that are either part of your own accent (you never even noticed that this could be a feature, subconsciously) or part of the general accent as you said.

@Cerberus I don’t think it’s safe to say always is all. The more you know about an accent, the longer you can go without raising a flag, and even if you make a mistake, you can always chalk it up to idiolect.

@JonPurdy Yeah OK, fair enough.

Take my "always" as rhetorical.

@Cerberus According to wikipedia, the first known use of the term "Received Pronunciation" was 1818. So I guess the English colonists of NZ must have spoken something like this, even though it would have been different from today's RP. I don't know about the Scottish colonists of the Dunedin and Invercargill regions though.

@DavidWallace Hmm but that doesn't say how wide-spread it was.

But it is possible, why not.

But ehm, why have you guys kept me up so late?

People from different continents can never be trusted.

Sorry, only 9:47pm where I am!

It's 9.47 am here.

Told you so, antipodes.

But it is actually quite funny.

Almost 4AM here. But I keep odd hours.

I don't.

Heh.

Well, it's bed time here!

It's been great; goodbye, new worlds!

I’m off as well. It’s been fun.

I know there's nobody else here; but just in case anyone reads the transcript later. That British guy doing the accents was superb. The ones that I thought WEREN'T quite right were the RP and the Aussie. I don't think it's a coincidence that out of the accents that he aped, these are the two that are closest to my accent.

sitting here, at the moment

no real plans

I see. that's counterintuitive

I would definitely prefer to be told that someone isn't attracted to me if I tell them I'm attracted to them. I find it so much easier when I know where I stand.

anyway. I must get on with my day

Really? This hasn't been answered definitively on this site already?

This guy needs to stop. He's at 19 downvotes.

0 upvotes.

@Mahnax And what exactly does "I am perusing MCA form Birla Institute of Applied Sciences,Bhimtal Nainital good experiences in java,J2EE" mean in his profile? I'll tell you what it means: NNS.

@Robusto We had a discussion last night about that user. He's NNS, but also sloppy

@Robusto Certainly, but it also means that this is someone who just doesn't get it.

Hi @Sim.

Good morning

Hmm, I wonder when he will be banned from asking questions.

@Mahnax Hmm, we almost never get that kind of user on this site. I wonder what went wrong this time. Solar flares?

@Robusto Yes, let's blame solar flares.

Or the fact that it's a leap year. We haven't had to deal with a leap year on ELU until now.

Hmm. I always forget about leap years.

@Mahnax Not a problem. Leap years never forget about you.

@Robusto Uh, that's, good... I think.

No, it's thoroughly good. Think about it: If leap years forgot about you, you'd be a day ahead of everyone else and you'd wonder where everybody was.

@simchona NNS I can handle, but sloppy is tough to stomach.

Would everything go back to normal the next day, or would I be forever stuck in the day after everyone else?

@Mahnax I think it would be fodder for a Twilight Zone episode.

@Robusto Do they still make that?

No.

That's a shame.

Ooh, Nirvana.

Gotta run, bye!

Later.

@Reg, @Vit, @Kit, @Cerb: New def war.

I think it is fine

hi @Jasper

Jasper do you have a website?

i saw a guy making a javascript for youtube ads, which is cool

it means you can add scripts for any website

I hate YouTube now.

the script stops the ads from youtube videos

Every time I watch a YouTube video, they pause it at 0:10 for no apparent reason.

@JasperLoy Huh.

@JasperLoy no, me neither

i would wonder how much it would cost

@JasperLoy Meh.

@JasperLoy yes,

but something directly with the name you choose, not www.aaa.com/bbb/ccc