A friend of mine’s first assignment as a senior engineer was to find ways to eliminate more moving parts and metal fasteners from cheaper spec products, because removing a dozen two cent screws would save the company tens of millions over the life of the design. Not just in parts, but because they’re more complicated and take longer to install than just snapping and glueing a plastic shell together.

With the scale of manufacturing at companies like GM and Ford, saving a few thousand per car on parts and labor with a touchscreen infotainment system is a massive, massive amount of money. The R&D costs of converting from knobs to touchscreens would probably be covered in the first few months.

Corporations pay stagnant wages, raise prices, funnel money out of the economy to shareholders who hoard wealth, and then get worried when there’s no one left who can buy their products?

Tell me again why we think C-Suite folks are smart?

Right, because they’ll get bailed out again and stay rich. That’s why.

It’s a god damn disgrace.

I’m sure someone will come around and tell me how complicated economics is and why we should trust business and industry leaders who went to school for this sort of thing, like basic pattern recognition and common sense couldn’t have predicted that people who can barely afford groceries would stop buying cars…

Fuck.

You don’t have to tell people you use Linux or talk to them about it. I know that because I use Zorin OS, which is a really modern feeling Linux distro with a slick user interface, that’s perfect for people like you and I, who don’t want to be bombarded with opinions on the “right” operating system and just want to use their computers in peace. You should totally switch!

I’m not even certain that we even disagree on the fundamental principle, just the details of the example I gave.

Slightly off topic, but does anyone have experience with there being a tradition of researching family histories and genealogy among later generation immigrant families in nations outside the US?

I’ve had multiple friends and relations start researching their family history with the intent of finding the first ancestor to immigrate to the US and their country of origin. As some others have said, I don’t believe these people consider themselves to truly be a part of that culture, but it’s a fun bit of personal trivia and some fresh new traditions to explore, so it gets talked about.

I wonder if that’s universal, or if it could be more of a phenomenon in the US and contributing to what the OP is observing.

One more time: We aren’t examining how the average English speaker would interpret this, only the reasons why the priest’s answer might change.

This has been interesting. Good luck to you. =)

The question, in both cases, involves smoking while praying. The priest never looks at, or gives a judgement on smoking in general, there’s no reason to assume the priest would forbid smoking in other circumstances.

The question does change, but not as fundamentally as you’re claiming it does. The information presented in both questions remains the same, only the word order changes, which changes how the priest perceives that information.

Anyway, good luck out there. =)

Why would the answer be no? Who cares if you smoke while doing a cartwheel? Who said the priest would forbid such a thing?

In both situations, a man is asking about the propriety of praying while inhaling the smoke from a cigarette. That’s vital information.

The information does matter to the smoker and the priest. We’re not teasting these statements for validity and we’re not making our own judgements. We’re examining why the priest’s answer might have changed. That’s all.

Those aren’t the same questions from the original post. You’ve omitted half the information given to the priest in each question.

Both questions, in their entirety, deal with smoking and praying. The subject is smoking and praying. You’ve reframed this as a question about smoking and a separate question about praying. That was never the case.

EDIT: minor clarification.

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I didn’t strip all context from the scenario. I defined the context. It’s just not the context you believe I should be using. You keep adding something that was never in my original post, then arguing against what you yourself added to try invalidate the exercise on the basis of your personal interpretation. Sorry, but that’s missing the point by a wide margin and I feel it’s a waste of time.

Otherwise it becomes like the trolley problem.

Yes. That is exactly what it’s meant to be like and precisely what I’ve been saying.

Just like the trolley problem, it’s a self-contained thought exercise. But instead of illustrating a difficult ethical choice, it demonstrates a point about language shaping reasoning.

There’s nothing to be won or lost by including outside context or narrowly defining the meaning of each word to prove what is or isn’t contradictory. This isn’t an argument over what the language means. Your personal interpretation of the language is irrelevant, it’s the priest and/or the smoker’s interpretation that matters. The singular point is for you to consider how and why their answer changes.

If you believe their answer changes because they interpreted the meaning of those words differently due to the order in which they were given, that’s valid. If you believe, like I do, that the answer changes because their reasoning was shallow and contradictory, also valid. If you believe the answer didn’t change and the smoker misunderstood, once again, valid. What conclusion can we draw here, what’s common to all of these? They all show that changing the question changes our thought process and how we interpret meaning.

If you dislike my example this much, create your own. It makes no difference to me.

Just invent your own scenario where changes to the way a question is phrased leads a person to two different and contradictory conclusions, and use that example to briefly examine how language can shape our reasoning. That’s all we need here. Digressions on language, meaning, Boolean logic, and speaking to infants will only cloud the issue.

We’re getting very forest for the trees here.

It’s a thought experiment, a controlled imaginary environment used to illustrate a point. It’s supposed to be isolated from outside contex to make that point clearer. It’s purely hypotheical and comes self contained with all the context it needs. We’re testing one metaphorical variable, so that our results aren’t muddled. You just went and added another half dozen for the sake of argument…

Prayer is prayer in this context. No other meaning. There are no types of prayer in this particular sect, focus is irrelevant. Is it against God’s will to smoke while you pray? Can you answer that question, yes or no, based off the priest’s answers?

The fact that the priest, parishioner, and the typical intended audience for this particular hypothetical don’t do the kind of analysis you’ve worked up here is really a large part of what this particular thought experiment is trying to illuminate, don’t you think?

I agree with that.

Good. =)

This is also part of my broader gripe with social media, cable news, and the current media landscape in general. They use so many sneaky little psychological hooks to keep you plugged in that I honestly believe it’s screwing with our heads to the point of it being a public health crisis.

People are already frazzled and beat down by the onslaught of dopamine feedback loops and outrage bait, then you go and get them hooked on a charbot that feeds into every little neurosies they’ve developed and just sinks those hooks in even deeper and it’s no wonder some people are having a mental health crisis.

A lot of us vastly overestimate our resistance to having our heads jacked with and it worries me.

And this is hard for me, actually. Because of my work background and the jargon used, I’m unconsciously negative about things a lot of the time. It’s a tough habit to break.

Thanks!

Absolutely, and the medium can make a huge difference as well. I suspect that there’s something about chatbots and the medium of their messages that helps set those hooks extra deep in people.

It’s more about how the slightly different questions lead the hypothetical priest to two separate and contradictory conclusions than disrespecting God.

At any rate, all opinions on tobacco and prayer are fine by me, just watch out for any friends you think might be talking to chatbots a little too much.

But in both cases, the person is asking to do the same thing. The order of the words in the sentence doesn’t change the end result, we always wind up with someone smoking and praying simultaneously, which may or may not be against God’s will.

Strip away the justifications and simplify the word choices and you get this:

1. May I smoke while I pray? No, you may not.
2. May I pray while I smoke? Yes, you may.

Given that, can you say if it is right or wrong to smoke and pray simultaneously?

And again, this is just a hypothetical scenario. In the broader context of life, religion, and tobacco use, it’ll never be this simple, but it works for an example.

Now, someone might point out that by simplifying the wording, I’ve changed the meaning of the original statement to make it fit my argument, and that now it means something else. But that’s essentially my original point, phrasing and word choices can shape our reasoning, thought processes, and how we interpret meaning in ways we aren’t immediately aware of, leading us to different conclusions or even delusional thinking.

It’s the opinion on smoking, not praying, that differs.

In both cases you’re praying and smoking at the same time, so your actions don’t change, but the priest rationalizes two completely different answers based on the way the question is posed. It’s just an example to show how two contradictory answers can seem rational to the same person because of the language used.

I guess my point is that I have a very hard time relating to this.

That’s fair. In the same vein, you might find a priest that tells you to stop smoking for your health no matter how you phrase the question about lighting up and prayer. What people are receptive to is going to vary.

I’d like argue that more of us are susceptible to this sort of thing than we suspect, but that’s not really something that can be proved or disproved. What seems pretty certain is that at least some of us are at risk, and given all the other downsides of chatbots, it’d be best to regulate them in a hurry.