English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

they went bust

user19161

At first I thought it was only the local one that closed.

user19161

I wonder how they went bust. They seem to be doing well.

it was a sad day - they had a good magazine section

user19161

The biggest one here now is Kinokuniya.

8:02 PM

I guess they couldn't get the stock. Woolworths (used to be a general store in the UK) went bust for the same reason, the company who delivered their stock went bust

user19161

They need people who know what people want to run their stores.

either that or they couldn't get money from banks

most retail companies run on credit

user19161

I must say that Kinokuniya has available almost all of the Oxford dictionaries.

user19161

But almost nobody ever gets the big ones.

@WillHunting 紀伊國屋書店!!!

user19161

8:04 PM

One might break their back while carrying such a huge cuboid home.

they'll need it delivered in instalments!

user19161

@Robusto After spending a minute using google translate, I finally got the result.

@WillHunting You couldn't dope it out from the kanji?

user19161

@Robusto I don't know Japanese and my Chinese sucks.

hey, are there any British commercially successful writers whose works are commonly thought to be read by the hoi polloi? many people here in Russia read detectives and romance novels in the subway or while riding the bus, and you only need 3 guesses to guess the author with a 100% accuracy

8:07 PM

@Vitaly like Agatha Christie?

is she read by the hoi Polloi?

I don't know

she's really popular

also, J. K. Rowling

user19161

@MattЭллен They have the two volume Shorter OED at a terribly expensive rate.

@Vitaly amazon.com/Robert-Harris/e/B000APBPA4/…

The Ghost is one of the best mystery/thrillers I've ever read. And it's about a writer.

I have The Fear Index on my Kindle and am going to read it next.

user19161

I have the proofreader badge!

> Dr. Alex Hoffmann’s name is carefully guarded from the general public, but within the secretive inner circles of the ultrarich he is a legend. He has developed a revolutionary form of artificial intelligence that predicts movements in the financial markets with uncanny accuracy. His hedge fund, based in Geneva, makes billions.

How can you resist?

user19161

english.stackexchange.com/badges/100/proofreader

8:12 PM

congrats

user19161

But my profile says I did 88 reviews, not 100.

@Robusto is that a serious question?

Am I ever completely serious?

Last Tuesday you were.

user19161

Wow Hugo has been adding a lot of tag wiki info.

8:15 PM

@RegDwightѬſ道 I don't remember last Tuesday.

Who the who are Electromagnetic Ponys?

user19161

@RegDwightѬſ道 He was never last Tuesday.

user19161

Robusto != Last Tuesday. QED.

Tuesday Weld

Tuesday Weld (born August 27, 1943) is an American actress. Weld began her acting career as a child, and progressed to more mature roles during the late 1950s. She won a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Female Newcomer in 1960. Over the following decade she established a career playing dramatic roles in films. As a featured performer in supporting roles, her work was acknowledged with nominations for a Golden Globe Award for Play It As It Lays (1972), a nomination for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1978), an Emmy Award for The Winter of...

She is the last Tuesday I can recall.

@Robusto in that case, based on the summary alone, i'm not going to read it. firstly, to keep some mental hygiene because i know my brain is human and is perfectly susceptible to human fallacies. secondly, because actual artificial intelligences (that is, the AIs we have now) are vastly more exciting than fictional ones. thirdly, the plot doesn't sound realistic and i figure the author hasn't taken any measures to arrive

... at realistic predictions like, say, Greg Egan or certain LW folks

8:19 PM

@Vitaly No, really, I knew it would be beneath you.

@Robusto and i wrote all that just to post the link. :P

Q: When I use "does not make" and "makes no"

0

guys. I was thinking to use this phrase on my computer program: This action does not make changes on user's machine. Just to be ensure, I always double-check on Google Translator and GT suggests: This action make no changes on user's machine. I suppose that both are correct and have ...

expression-choice

@Robusto can you tell me, in all honesty, that you have never committed that fallacy when thinking or talking about AIs in this chatroom?

user19161

@RegDwightѬſ道 And he started with guys, lol.

@Vitaly The fallacy of Terminatorizing AI?

8:23 PM

@WillHunting read the rest of it and weep.

@Robusto the fallacy of generalizing from fictional evidence

I think I'll close it as a dupe of this:

0

Q: Rules for 'no' and 'not'

Can anyone elucidate a comprehensive list of rules regarding the usage of 'no' and 'not'? I've found rules of thumb, such as 'no' for nouns and 'not' for everything else, but then there's the case of there are no kids and there are not any kids -- what's the rule for that? And are there other rul...

negation

@Vitaly I'll tell you that if you tell me what the new M144 is?

Or this:

0

Q: About the 'no' and 'not'

What are the differences between the two sentences below: There is no rule. There isn't rule.

grammar word-choice

@Robusto the new M144 is the old AF4 (technically, M169 has the highest gold-to-energy and XP-to-energy ratios, but there is no deck that beats it as reliably as Lance Riders and Tabitha beat AF4), but apparently a new side mission is coming up soon that's gonna trump AF4 at ~17 gold per energy and a 99% winrate

8:25 PM

Ferkrissakes, we have so many crap questions about no vs not, it ain't even funny.

I think I'll just add to the FAQ, "no questions about no vs. not, because if you have to ask that, you are not qualified to understand the answer".

I'm frustrated.

@Vitaly OK, thanks. And my answer is, I believe I can distinguish fantasy from reality. But how would I know?

And I don't mean that flippantly. I do cry "bullshit" on a lot of fiction, especially movies, for their loopy take on science in general. But I don't let it bother me if the story is fun. Still, I'm pretty sure none of the "willing suspension of disbelief" leaks out into my real life.

The fallacy is not about distinguishing fantasy from reality in its strict sense.

Now we're going to get into a semantic argument about the meaning of "strict" ...

NO! :P

8:34 PM

I guess you'll have to ask a more specific question then.

OK, the article is long and I think Eliezer tried to make every sentence count, but if I have to pick an illustrative one that I think conveys the fallacy to a satisfactory degree, it'll be this:

@Vitaly are you saying that people assume that Sci Fi authors know what they're talking about, so think that Terminator is a likely outcome of the singularity?

> The movie is not believed, but it is available. It is treated, not as a prophecy, but as an illustrative historical case.

@MattЭллен No.

And for Matt:

> Do movie-viewers succeed in unbelieving what they see? So far as I can tell, few movie viewers act as if they have directly observed Earth's future. People who watched the Terminator movies didn't hide in fallout shelters on August 29, 1997. But those who commit the fallacy seem to act as if they had seen the movie events occurring on some other planet; not Earth, but somewhere similar to Earth.

In other words, the fallacy is not in believing the movie or book to be true or scientifically accurate, the fallacy stems from your brain (which has a huge evolutionary history in which movies and books weren't present) automatically creating a category for some fictional concept you see as if it were real and then using the category to think about non-fictional concepts. You may not even realize it on a conscious level.

@Vitaly And my answer is, categorically, no. I don't fear AI because of Skynet. I fear human beings making catastrophic errors through technology, including computers (including AI), because, frankly, I don't think humans are smart enough (or perhaps I should say "mature enough") to not fuck us all up with the technologies we currently have or may develop.

@Vitaly If you don't trust my ability to realize it on a conscious level, why are you even asking the question?

@Vitaly People make mental shortcuts from stories they hear, especially if that story is well rendered and looks real, even moreso if it explains something they don't understand in a way that is easy to understand.

8:40 PM

@Robusto I do trust your ability to realize it on a conscious level provided that you've had enough exposure to explanations of that specific fallacy in order to be able to make your understanding of it operational. :P

user19161

@MattЭллен Is that Kit?

@WillHunting it's a stock image. I doubt it is Kit, but who knows?

Well, Kit, obviously

@Vitaly We have had this discussion before. I mentioned Vonnegut's book Cat's Cradle. Do I think that particular thing (Ice 9) will come about? No. But something as devastating just might. And before it happens, we will not know about it.

BTW, you can ease up on the emoticons. I already imagine you sticking out your tongue at me most of the time.

user19161

@Robusto I wonder how one sticks it out at one side properly and not at the centre.

@Robusto I think you are oversharing.

8:47 PM

Awwww ...

@WillHunting do not Google search for "colon P"

user19161

@MattЭллен Notice I used "properly". The above photo is not counted.

user19161

It would take a very flexible tongue to do it.

@Vitaly I share because I care. There, try and defeat me with your non-rhyming logic.

2 mins ago, by Vitaly

@Robusto I think you are oversharing.

8:49 PM

44 secs ago, by Robusto

@Vitaly I share because I care. There, try and defeat me with your non-rhyming logic.

user19161

@Robusto Care bears share!

If you can't make it rhyme, I don't have the time.

And wow, do I really use that emoticon that often?? What's the most commonly understood meaning of ":P" anyway? I might as well ask if I use it anyway

What you're calling science just feels like defiance.

@Vitaly I notice it a lot from you. It is the emoticon for sticking out one's tongue.

But what sticking out one's tongue commonly means?

8:53 PM

@Vitaly It is a child's way of defiantly insulting someone.

I am asking because I just googled and it says “contempt,” which is surprising to me

That's pretty close to the mark.

@Robusto Huh.

Why, what did you think it meant?

@Vitaly Yes. It is a childish gesture. Done for comic effect if a grown-up uses it. Or a sign of extreme immaturity.

user19161

8:55 PM

@MattЭллен That is better, you may wanna remove it.

nah, peoples know what I looks like

@Robusto something like “there, try and beat that” (in a childish? way)

user19161

@MattЭллен When was that taken?

@WillHunting just now

it is not a comfortable pose

2 mins ago, by Robusto

@Vitaly It is a child's way of defiantly insulting someone.

Q.E.D.

8:56 PM

:Þ is more realistic

@Robusto so my interpretation is not how it would usually be interpreted?

but keyboards don't come with a thorn key

user19161

@MattЭллен Wow how do you make that symbol?

@WillHunting copy paste from wikipedia :D

I mean, the whole notion of emoticons is childish anyway. Sometimes I use them when I fear that the reader is really not capable of understanding UTF-8 sarcasm.

4

8:57 PM

Thorn (letter)

Thorn or þorn (Þ, þ), is a letter in the Old English, Old Norse, and Icelandic alphabets, as well as some dialects of Middle English. It was also used in medieval Scandinavia, but was later replaced with the digraph th, except in Iceland where it survives. The letter originated from the rune in the Elder Fuþark, called thorn in the Anglo-Saxon and thorn or thurs ("giant") in the Scandinavian rune poems, its reconstructed Proto-Germanic name being Thurisaz. It has the sound of either a voiceless dental fricative [θ], like th as in the English word thick, or a voiced dental fricative [ð]...

Alt-0222 Þ

Alt + 0254 þ

user19161

I only know Alt + QED.

But, hey, everyone can be childish. At least sometimes.

@Robusto yeah i'm using them precisely because of that. i don't really know why i keep switching to a no-capital style sometimes, but it just feels right somehow.

9:00 PM

@Vitaly I think ELU chat is infantilizing you.

Mar 15 '11 at 10:53, by Robusto

@Cerberus — You're only young once, but that's no reason you can't be immature forever.

@Robusto You misspelled @Kit.

user19161

There is this video on the internet about someone who spent many years looking for Einstein's preserved brain. I wonder if you have seen it and if it is a hoax. I can't recall where it is now.

@WillHunting Did you look behind the refrigerator?

user19161

@Robusto Oh that's the brain, I meant the video.

Anyway, gotta motor. CU.

9:03 PM

CYA.

Bye!

user19161

As usual, it is not clear who is leaving...

sure it is:

1 min ago, by Robusto

Anyway, gotta motor. CU.

user19161

@MattЭллен Multiple interpretations are possible. QED.

but not worthwhile

9:06 PM

What's a single word for "using something a lot when it's not necessary"?

user19161

@Gigili waste?

user19161

More context may help.

Or when it's getting on one's nerves

Like my ":P"s.

For instance, someone uses a word a lot but there's no need to use it at all.

@Vitaly Not really but close.

user19161

9:09 PM

Is there a sentence you want to fit the word into?

What's wrong with overuse?

user19161

I just learnt that MW has an Adv Learner's D at learnersdictionary.com.

@Vitaly Pah, didn't come to my mind. It fits perfectly. I was thinking of "misuse" which has a different meaning.

user19161

@Gigili Or excessive if you want an adjective.

You're using <the word> excessively, makes sense?

user19161

9:14 PM

@Gigili Yes, excessively is an adverb there.

Yes, thank you.

user19161

You can just say you are overusing the word.

I see.