It's so common it's got to be hard wired into our brains.
I see comment threads over and over where the debate becomes about the meaning of a single word without regard to the context that the word appears in.
Especially true where the word appears in a context where its use is deliberately ironic.
A recent example is "policing for profit". This refers to the police having a strong financial incentive to emphasize investigations and arrests that lead to confiscation under civil forfeiture laws.
Honest to the Gods there's someone complaining that this isn't really profit because profit requires the voluntary exchange of goods.
This person is clearly a kind of Libertarian I encountered enough on L. Neil Smith's blog that I stopped reading The Libertarian Enterprise altogether. If you've libertarian leanings, you've met them, and likely screamed at the screen, "SHUT UP YOU'RE NOT HELPING!" while praying that they never get in front of a camera when the media wishes to show what kind of nut-case becomes a slavering anarchist Libertarian.
This side trip about the meaning of a single word completely derailed any discussion of the actual text of the post and after a few loops you have to re-read the original post to remember what the author was talking about before it started.
But, hey, we now know what the meaning of 'is' is.
I see comment threads over and over where the debate becomes about the meaning of a single word without regard to the context that the word appears in.
Especially true where the word appears in a context where its use is deliberately ironic.
A recent example is "policing for profit". This refers to the police having a strong financial incentive to emphasize investigations and arrests that lead to confiscation under civil forfeiture laws.
Honest to the Gods there's someone complaining that this isn't really profit because profit requires the voluntary exchange of goods.
This person is clearly a kind of Libertarian I encountered enough on L. Neil Smith's blog that I stopped reading The Libertarian Enterprise altogether. If you've libertarian leanings, you've met them, and likely screamed at the screen, "SHUT UP YOU'RE NOT HELPING!" while praying that they never get in front of a camera when the media wishes to show what kind of nut-case becomes a slavering anarchist Libertarian.
This side trip about the meaning of a single word completely derailed any discussion of the actual text of the post and after a few loops you have to re-read the original post to remember what the author was talking about before it started.
But, hey, we now know what the meaning of 'is' is.