[teal]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Point of view has little to do with what the statements Gore made mean. It is irrelevant what he meant to say, all that matters for purposes of this argument is what he said. And what he said indicates that he had a large hand in the creation of the internet (take the internet to mean whatever the heck you want, it doesn't matter). Which of course he did not. In all probability it was a mistatement (an error), but of course Gore can never make errors. Its always taken out of context. This is the picture you are painting by essentially ignoring the only reasonable meaning of his statement and creating new meanings that show that Gore did not make a verbal gaffe.

Oh boy here we go again... IF: You make a fundamental logical error when you assume that a statement can only mean one reasonable thing. That is not true. Any statement in natural language above the complexity of "run spot run" can be interpreted in a number of different ways (probably infinite and come to think of it I can interpret run spot run in at least two different ways... ). This is why translation programs have such difficulty, language is a hell of a lot more than just some definitions and word replacements that you can string together. If your view of language was correct (that point of view doesn't matter when interpreting language) then translation programs would all work flawlessly and we know they don't. The point is that given multiple different ways of interpreting a statement we look to context and our personal life experience and redundancy to figure out what the hell someone means. The context of this particular statement is important that's why Gore supporters tend to quote the whole thing while Gore detractors tend to quote just the particular sentence under consideration. As Geo has shown me, life experience is also very important in interpreting this particular quote. Different peoples amongst the vastly different sub cultures of America will interpret the quote differently even under context.

What Geo and I are arguing about is actually a very very subtle difference in opinion. Alien beings watching this, and probably several forum lurkers are probably scratching their heads and going... WTF? those two don't actually disagree about anything at all... That's why I asked him to define his terms a while back. The term verbal gaffe in the context of this argument means a *serious* verbal misstatement not its more general meaning of simply a statement that can be interpreted wrongly out of context. I maintain that Gore's statment is on the order of magnitude of AK's example of Bush waving to Stevie Wonder (in one point of view that's dumb bc/ SW is blind, from another point of view that's perfectly reasonable because the other people watching are not blind and like for certain social norms to be observed even when they are somewhat silly in that particular context i.e. *nothing* about Bush's action was the slightest bit weird or wrong). Given these two points of view I'm sure reasonable people will choose both, since the issue is muddied we give Bush the benefit of the doubt and move on. That's the level of verbal gaffe that I would classify Gore's statement as, there isn't anything at all wrong about it (ala Bush's waving to SW) but people predisposed to a certain mindset can certainly interpret it that way. Geo seems to be mainting something far more serious, that Gore's statement was factually incorrect and that *NO* reasonable case can possibly be presented otherwise. I find this point of view perplexing.

Lastly you guys can try to hang me with the rabid Gore fanboy label who thinks Gore can do no wrong all you want. It won't stick. The guy did some incredibly dumb things during the course of the campaign. Serious strategic errors and the like and probably even made many verbal gaffes (of the garden variety not the *serious* variety). I'm no Gore fanboy and I maintain that this particular statement is not a *serious* verbal gaffe but merely a "poor choice of words" as defined earlier by Geo.

Cheers!

Teal