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Statement 1: “You can save up to 77% if you buy now”
Statement 2: “you can never save by buying something. I save if I don’t buy”
Statement 2a: “save 77% compared to buying at full price”
Statement 2b: “Save 77% compared to not buying the item”
Statement 2’s first use of “save” suggests that of Statement 2a, and Statement 2’s second use of “save” suggests that of Statement 2b. Statement 1’s use of the word “save” corresponds to that of Statement 2a. I don’t think we disagree on the semantics, though we may be phrasing things a little differently.
You’re playing a semantics game though. The assumption is that you ARE going to buy the thing. Society has decided that “save 77%” is a valid shortening of “save 77% compared to buying at full price” because that is the most logical comparison to make. Yes. “Save 77% compared to not buying the item” makes no sense, but that is clearly not what is being implied here. Implying and inferring things is a normal part of human communication, and refusing to accept the implications doesn’t make you clever.
I agree that the original poster was playing a semantics game; indeed, I interpret Statement 2 as follows.
Interpetation A: Statement 2 is a witticism that plays off the contextual use of the word “save”. Specifically, the humorous force of Statement 2 is in its reinterpretation of the word “save”. Statement 2 is saying: “Statement 1’s use of the word ‘save’ is that of Statement 2a, but I choose to reinterpret Statement 1’s use of the word ‘save’ to that of Statement 2b!”
Comment 1: The reinterpretation performed by Statement 2 is mildly subversive in that it rejects Statement 1’s interpretation of ‘save’.
Comment 2: The reinterpretation performed by Statement 2 is mildly empowering in that it performs a reinterpetation of ‘save’ to the benefit of the writer.
You say “refusing to accept the implications doesn’t make you clever”. There’s a bit of an aesthetic judgment to the “doesn’t make you clever” part which we can agree to disagree on. But Interpretation A does not depend on “refusing to accept the implications”. Rather, it accepts the implication, and subverts it to provide the effects described in Comments 1 and 2.
Note: The original post that started this discussion seems to be unavailable apparently because the original poster (I am not the original poster) deleted it. I believe we are just discussing among ourselves.
The assumption is that you ARE going to buy the thing.
Sure, but that’s the assumption created by the advertisement. If you’re debating buying something, and the ad says “You can save up to 77% if you buy now” then suddenly the presupposition is (sneakily!) introduced that you are going to buy it. In that case, identifying and rejecting the presupposition is the smarter thing to do.
Don’t think there’s anything on lemmy yet.
!fosai@lemmy.world – has a good overview/introduction
Some of those are inactive, though.
Not OP, but FWIW I didn’t realize until reading your comment that the “awesome-selfhosted software” under Resources was actually an FAQ/List. I thought it was a repo of maybe just a couple relevant apps.
I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense now that I think about it, but I think it’s easy to miss.
reddits true size lies at around 5 million or less. Less than 5 times Lemmy’s size.
Lemmy doesn’t have 1.5 million active users; that’s how many active users the Fediverse as a whole has; most of those are Mastodon users. Lemmy has around 32K active users. So if your 5 million number is right, Reddit is around 156 times larger than us.
I’m not the person you asked, but I’ve heard an argument that goes like this: Evil Company will “embrace” something, then “extend” it in a way that only works with Evil Company’s product, then “extinguish” that thing by making Evil Company’s approach incompatible with it. A discussion is provided here: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat a machine learning algorithm.” - traditional Native American saying.