From: ted@cs.brown.edu (Tony Davis)
Subject: Re: Jury Nullification -- The Power is a Right
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 20:54:14 GMT

In article <1992Oct7.163734.10859@eff.org> mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
> In article <1992Oct7.133048.4347@cs.brown.edu> ted@cs.brown.edu (Tony Davis) writes:
>> In article <whatever@whereever> mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
>>> But what I "really said" is identical to what I wrote.

>> My point is that in this case and many others that is not possible.  What
>> you wrote had several possible interpretations.  It is now clear to me that
>> the interpretation you meant is not the one which the context led me and
>> others to understand you to be saying.

> When you say "the interpretation you meant" you are being a bit
> misleading. I didn't mean an "interpretation." I don't need to interpret
> my own words, since I know what I meant.

Of course, you needn't interpret your own words, but you certainly mean an
interpretation in the following sense.  When words have more than one
valid interpretation the author usually intends (and you have verified for
this particular case) that only one of them reflects the author's meaning
(whether or not the author realizes multiple interpretations are applicable).
Are we playing word games again, or do you truly not understand this?

Of all the people that should understand this you are doubly among them.
The legal professions have expended a great deal of effort defining,
interpreting, and redefining words to build up a lexicon in which laws
and procedures can be stated with some exactness.  Even so those laws
and procedures still require reinterpretation and further clarification
with regularity.  In day-to-day conversation, however, we don't have
recourse to such a well-defined set of terms.  Instead we must rely on
usage and context to distinguish among the many meanings for individual
words.  The process is not straight forward nor deterministic which
leads to the situation where even sets of words can have more than one
interpretation.

> In any case, the meaning I assigned to the words I used in my original
> text was certainly a "possible" meaning. So your first sentence is false.

What you wrote had multiple interpretations.  You intended only one
interpretation.  Therefore it is not possible for what you wrote and
what you meant (i.e., what you "really said") to be identical.  I generalize
from my own experience and the transcribed experiences of others to
state that the English language is so ambiguous as to make the possibility
of multiple interpretations the norm rather than the exception.  When
people are trying to communicate (rather than argue or debate or exchange
words) and trying to listen, ambiguities are cleared up if they arise and
rarely cause problems.  By my own wildly made-up estimate (hence subject
to equally random revision at my own discretion :-), 90% of the flaming
and arguing on Usenet stems from the participants using different
interpretations of the same sets of words.  (Of course, there are opinions
about interpretations too, so if instead I were forced to use the phrase
"different, equally valid interpretations", I would lower the percentage
somewhat. :-)

>> The supposed game is in your response to the misunderstanding.  When
>> Mr. Date posted what I thought was an obvious indication that he didn't
>> understand what you meant, you didn't respond with clarification nor even
>> answer the question he asked.  Effectively you replied `That's not what
>> I said`.  It seemed to be a deliberately noncommunicative response.
> 
> It's a deliberate pointer to the original text. Too many people misread
> postings hurriedly, then blame their misreadings on the poster rather than
> on their own hurry.

Up to this point I can agree with you in general, but not for this particular
thread.

> After a while, it quits being worthwhile to expend
> extra energy on those people.
> 
>> My characterization of the two replies:
>> Mike Godwin:  'That's not what I said.  Are you stupid?'
>> Tim Smith:    'That's not what he said.  *THIS* is what he said'
> 
> Which is to say, Tim Smith is far more patient with that poster's amazing
> misinterpretation of my words than I am. This makes sense, given whose
> words they were.

You're kidding, right?

A public representative of a membership organization has the energy and
patience to compose a few words to rub peoples' noses in doodoo, but that
same representative doesn't have the energy or patience to use those same
few words for clarification instead?  If such were truly the view of said
representative, such a wasteful expenditure of resources would probably
shine poorly on the representative's reputation and reflect poorly upon the
representative's organization, no?

If responding to silly posts consumes too many mental or physical resources,
wouldn't it be better simply not to respond?  Usenet posters generally seem
more than willing to point out the error of other's ways when the silliness
slips through.  Witness Mr. Smith above or several concurrent threads in
this newsgroup alone.



Tony Davis
ted@cs.brown.edu