tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Nov 25 22:27:26 2007

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Re: nuqDaq 'oH puchpa''e'?

Qang qu'wI' ([email protected])



On Nov 25, 2007 10:11 PM, Alan Anderson <[email protected]> wrote:
> It's attached to your post because it's a response to the question
> you asked in it.
>

In actuality it isn't.  I had hoped that the way in which I responded
would cause you to stand back and think about something, and see it
for yourself, so that I wouldn't have to post a more elaborate
response. jIQapbe'ba'.

What you've done - entirely by accident I'm sure - is to commit a
leading question 'fallacy'.  You made a deduction about my motivations
for asking the questions I asked, and that deduction is erroneous.
bIQ ngaS HIvje'lIJ.  You took the erroneous deduction entirely for
granted and posted a recommendation derived from that deduction that
asserts the falsehood implicitly in a way that prevents easy
correction.

Correcting a leading question fallacy can be quite difficult due to
the emotional nature of human reasoning.  A classical example by
analogy would be "I recommend that you focus more on being kind to
animals and stop beating your dog".  And though you might convince
everyone that you have never actually beaten your dog or even have
never owned a dog, time will pass, and eventually you may well
encounter: "hmm, gunchu'wI' .. I recognize him ... isn't he the bloke
who beats his dog?"  Things just stick sometimes.

Now, in this particular instance leaving everyone to the false belief
that I'm asking questions here in order build formulaic grammar based
on consensus in and of itself doesn't bother me. Not at all. To a
certain degree, that's just the definition of any language's grammar.
However, the reason that I do not want to allow this belief to take
hold is because I anticipate that it will lead to me getting exactly
the kind of useless, irrelevant response that you gave. It holds the
risk - not a certainty, but a risk - of engendering "oh, there he goes
again, he needs to really just start making his own choices" or
something similar.  This has a likelihood of causing individuals -
even if unconsciously - to distort the responses that I might
otherwise have received, and thereby of substantially occluding my
enjoyment in participating here on the list.

Here is a small set of answers, for comparison, that I would have been
quite pleased with:

"Yes, that's right, I checked and there doesn't appear to be that form
in the canon"

"I checked further, and found a canon example"

"There doesn't appear to be any canon, and I'm not sure how the rule
that I am suggesting would apply.  We don't know"

"I've thought about that, and here is my idea [insert brilliant insight here]"

"I've thought about that, and here is my idea [insert not-so-brilliant
insight here]"

"my instinct would be..."

The question(s) that I asked have direct bearing on something that I
happen to be working on.  I already know how I would phrase the
questions, because I already phrased them.  I'm obviously implicitly
using the permanency/transience idea.  However, I believe that Voragh
has posted enough thoughts and info to call that idea into question,
at least sufficiently so to stand back and reconsider how I would like
to approach this.  I am only at the beginner-to-intermediate level,
and I'm rusty to boot.  It would be foolish for me not to pay
attention to and factor-in the knowledge and insight of the expert
Klingonists who so graciously spend their time posting here.  I simply
do not want individuals to be concerned with how I (- or anyone else,
for that matter -) am using the information, thoughts, ideas, and
insights supplied in the way in which you appear to have been
concerned, for the reasons stated.

-- 
Qang qu'wI'





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