Conversation

xkcd://993

xkcd://641

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJEaMtNN_dM

Ah yes the vegan tomato.

So this set of links (or, "links") spawned from a discussion of how products are advertised; apparently some vendor labels the package with a big model number, TU500 perhaps, and puts a smaller capacity number of only 250 somewhere. A human might buy the TU500 thinking that's the capacity they want. Nope!

Grice75.pdf

Much words! Philosophers probably aren't paid to reduce LOC.

The assumption that a conversation is cooperative is dubious; someone might be trying to scam you. Others will treat the conversation as a game, or sprachspiel as Wittgenstein put it. Some will play that game closer to calvinball than to, say, chess. Advertisers may well try to entice consumers to get something they do not want or really need, or maybe the TU500 label is only accidentally bad. Grice puts these down as failures to cooperate, though has an amusing line about the truth being easier to tell than a falsehood.

> Dominion is suing Fox News for defamation, arguing that some company executives and on-air stars knew that the network was airing inaccurate conspiracy theories that damaged Dominion's reputation.

Words can also be used for emotive effect; the truth content is more or less irrelevant to the whistle involved. It must be pointed out that natural languages are distinct from logic; in English one might state, "That's not a dog, that's a _______!" In logic, the blank could be anything. The set of not-dog or na gerku is pretty big. In English, the blank is most likely dog-like: bear, wolf, Baskervilles hound, etc.

So what's up with a vegan tomato? Several things: maybe there was space for an adjective; maybe aspersions are being cast on other brands of tomatoes; maybe the marketing department wishes to link their tomato with an identity ("I'm vegan; therefore I should buy vegan—oh hey, vegan tomatoes!") to increase their sales, even as Rationality screams "no! wrong!" from the upstairs window.