Friday, June 5, 2009

Sentences to ponder

From Lawrence Lessig:
Words have meaning. We don't get to choose their meaning. If you call something "X" people will hear the equation. They won't read the fine-print which says ("By X, I mean really not-X).
(So it's not baseball related. Shoot me.)

2 comments:

Lisa said...

So what inspired this revelation? This is basic introductory logic: you must define your terms.

John Lynch said...

Yes, but people generally do not stop to define their terms in most writing. Therefore, one should use the definition of a word most consistent with people's perception of it.