Random Rambling, #... something

[oloriel]

Cut for length according to topics.



Fun with pragmatics!

A while back I came across an interview with Wolfgang Schäuble in the Stern magazine. For the non-Germans, Schäuble is the current German minister of finance, but in the last legislative period he was minister of the interior, and mostly (in)famous for being terrorphobic and much in favour of stricter surveillance, waiving the assumption of innocence, quasi-censorship of the internet and other nice things.

This is relevant because, in the interview (which I no longer can find, but never mind, I can paraphrase) there was an exchange that went like this:

Schäuble: ... but there are limitations to what we can do. After all, 2 plus 2 only makes 4, not 400,000.
Interviewer: Some people might be tempted to say that 2 plus 2 makes 5.
Schäuble: Well, don't we all know about the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle?

Which only made me go "oh HOH" at the time, but then a few days later I thought about it again, and at that point I thought damn, I really should have copied that, because you can have such fun with this exchange. I mean, there are (at least) three readings to it! And it's a far more interesting way of explaining implicature and implication than "There's a garage around the corner". And, and.

Reading 1:
Both speakers mean exactly what they say, and there are no quirky implications or anything anywhere.
S: ... but there are limitations to what we can do. After all, 2 plus 2 only makes 4, not 400.000.
I: Some people might be tempted to say that 2 plus 2 makes 5. [Which is of course a mathematical fallcy: I am merely joking.]
S: Well, don't we all know about the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle? [I acknowledge your joke and make one in return.]

At first sight, this would perhaps be the obvious reading.

Except that 2 plus 2 makes 5 is not necessarily an innocent mathematical fallacy. It is also one of the key phrases in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. Pretty early on, Winston (the protagonist) states in his secret journal that "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows.", and of course - HERE BE SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T READ 1984 - it is not granted, and when in the end he is captured, he is (among other things) tortured until he not only is willing to say that "2 plus 2 makes 5" but also believes it while at the same time knowing that 2 plus 2 makes 4.
END SPOILERS
Now remember what I said above about Schäuble's term as minister of the interior? Yeah. While it's maybe a bit drastic (yet), this is certainly a guy whose policies invite 1984 references.

So here the other two readings come into play.

S: ... but there are limitations to what we can do. After all, 2 plus 2 only makes 4, not 400.000.
I: Some people might be tempted to say that 2 plus 2 makes 5. [By which I am referring to Big Brother and your paranoid policies.]
S: Well, don't we all know about the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle? [I am ignorant of your implication, take it as a joke, and reply in kind.]

OR,

S: ... but there are limitations to what we can do. After all, 2 plus 2 only makes 4, not 400.000.
I: Some people might be tempted to say that 2 plus 2 makes 5. [By which I am referring to Big Brother and your paranoid policies.]
S: Well, don't we all know about the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle? [I see what you're doing there, and you know what? 2 plus 2 is whatever Big Brother says it is, bitch.]

I suppose all these readings are perfectly legitimate. Personally I think the first is reasonably unlikely, but I suppose the context nonetheless allows for it. The second is all right; the third is kind of terrifying, even on a joke level.

... anyway.
This had a point somewhere, I swear, but it looked better in my mind than it looks in RL.



- - -



Etymological ponderings.

Speaking of doublethink, though: I've been wondering whether there is a relation between "doubt" and "double".

I mean, etymologically.

It would work out, explanation-wise: If you are having "second thoughts" about something, you're "doubting" it, right? If you are in "two minds" about something, you are doubting the validity of either option. If you accept both A and B, you do not believe in A (or B) exclusively.

But then, folk etymology explanations (like the one I read not too long back, where some priest insisted that there was an etymologic relation between German Seele ("soul") and See ("lake" or "sea", depending on grammatical gender). Um, I don't think so. There's certainly an orthographic relation, though, well spotted, have a cookie!) also often make sense, which doesn't make them true. Folk etymology doesn't see a relation between Schicksal and Seele, and THAT is there.

But the "doubt"/"double" thing would also work in German. "to doubt" is zweifeln and "doubt" is der Zweifel; "double" is either doppelt or --- zweifach. This certainly suggests a relation between "doubt" and "two" (zwei). (Old English has twînan or twêonan "to doubt", twîning or twêonung "doubt"; twîfeald or twêofeald is "twofold, double".)
Up to this point it certainly looks good.

The English word "doubt" is, as so many English words are, shamelessly stolen from Latin, where dubitare is "to doubt" and dubium is "doubt" as a noun and dubius/a/um is "doubtful".
"double" is also from Latin, where one of the many possibilities to express the meaning of "twice something" is duplus/a/um or alternatively duplex/icis. I assume those are derived from duo/ae/o "two". Since the only dub- or dup- word I could find that was not either related to "two" OR to "doubt" is the name of some little settlement up north in Hibernia, namely Dublinum (no, really!), which is just a Latinasation of Gaelic dubh linn (I assume, as I think I remember that the Romans called Dublin Eblana). That's ok.

If - except for Dublinum - all dub- words have to do with either doubt or two, I guess it's reasonably safe to assume that doubt in fact has to do with two.

I would kind of like to make a poll with pre-1940 speakers of English now to see how they would interpret the word "doublethink". I would be filled with glee if they said something like "A weird way of saying 'doubt', I suppose". Perhaps this could also be done if you found a sufficient number of people who never, never, never heard about 1984 or anything related, but then, how would you ensure that? At any rate, etymologically "Doublethink" is pretty much "doubt".

The funny thing is, of course, that in Orwell's Newspeak doublethink actually means pretty much the exact opposite of "doubt", namely, the ability/practice of knowing one thing and a diametrally opposed thing at the same time and believing in the reading that the Party currently favours without consciously not knowing the other: In other words, the ability not to doubt anything, no matter if there's proof of its fallacy in plain sight all around.

I wonder whether Orwell did that on purpose.
Probably did.
Probably hundreds of people have already written essays on this and I just didn't know, and I totally wasted my time with these ponderings.
Eh well.



- - -



Taking webcomics too seriously, or, while we're on the matter of being in two minds:

This is today's xkcd comic.

I cannot decide whether I want to laugh or cry or how I feel about this, on the whole. It's only stick figures, for Someone's sake, but they're so expressive!

On the one hand, it's a literature joke, which is nice; it is a literature joke which I get, which is even better; it is an intelligent literature joke, which is very good indeed; and it is a literature joke to do with a book I like in a nostalgic way, which is also good.
\o/

On the other hand, it also kind of reflects a sad truth. I am too young to say "kids today...", but I can't help it; when I hear Jörg's classroom stories (he currently also teaches chemistry at the local-- let's just call it a grammar school, I'm not up to explaining the German school system just now), or look at my cousins or the kids at jûdô practice or on those awful tv semi-documentations nobody admits to watching but that somehow catch one's attention while zapping - when looking at, well, kids today, I feel sooo old.
Kids today, they say, and very often it is true - though they also say it of my generation, and I know several living counterarguments - kids today don't go to play outside anymore, instead of playing football they have a Wii, instead of running around they have a playstation, instead of Capture the Flag in the woods it's World of Warcraft. (Nothing wrong with either the Wii or the playstation (or Xbox or whatever) or WoW. But they should be an "also" option for rainy hours, not an "only" option for all the time.)
A kid like that would probably indeed rather think of sending a camera probe into the wardrobe and watching from the comfortable safety of a computer screen, instead of getting her own shoes wet and getting into exciting real adventures.
;_;

On the other hand, here we have a prudent little girl who, after discovering a portal to a strange world, considers whether exploring the strange world is worth the potential risks of running into wicked witches talking animals perpetual winter potentially dangerous people and/or situations, and comes to a pretty rational conclusion: Send the droid! I mean, first send a probe and see what happens. (Of course StarGate - I mean, the original movie - already taught us that that doesn't always work, either.) Of course, this is ruined by the cable, since if the probe ran into an enemy, that enemy would then have no trouble following the wire back to Lucy. But anyway.
Then said little girl manages to assemble a working probe robot and follow its progress on her laptop. This is awesome because a) robot-building is awesome, b) it contradicts gender stereotypes, and c) even though Lucy isn't leaving the house (well, it's raining/snowing anyway), she's certainly getting her hands dirty and learning interesting things.
+5 initiative.
\o/

On the other hand, Mr. Tumnus only ever meets the probe robot. And probably tells the White Witch about it. Whatever she does about the probe, it'll tell Lucy that Inside The Wardrobe is too dangerous, so while she may tell her siblings what she found - she has proof on her laptop right there, after all, though if in-story technology is good enough for laptops and robots, Edmund will probably say that the World Inside The Wardrobe Iz Pastede On Yay - they'll probably never go there, and never save Narnia for a while.
;_;

Of course, the question is whether the camera probe would even work with the weird time-shift. Considering that time in Narnia passes waaay faster than outside the wardrobe, any images Lucy is likely to get are going to look like they're on ultra-fast forward - if she's lucky and the whole technology can deal with it in the first place.
And...

... why am I even writing this? It's only a bloody webcomic. Stick. Figures. I SHOULD BE WORKING.

Then again, it's XKCD.



- - -

Comments

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

It is my impression (as a guy with a literature degree, for whatever that's worth) that the majority of Latin words in English came by way of French, rather than direct loan from Rome.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

While that is in many cases true (except for most words in the religious context, which are indeed for the most part taken directly from Latin, seeing how the source texts tended to be purely Latin at the time; I would have to check the OED to see whether doubt entered English as a religious concept or in more general terms, and at what time, and in what form), it is also entirely irrelevant for the discussion at hand ;)

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

You are, of course, correct. I like to leave comments in people's journals from time to time, even if they're only tangentially relevant, to let said people know that I am actually reading.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Well, you could also have said something along the lines of "Dude, I think 1984 is totally overrated". Or, I dunno, "Yes, this comic is sad/ no, I think this comic is really funny". Or "No honestly, everybody knows about the 'doubt' and 'doublethink' thing, and So-and-so, That Guy and Someone Else wrote pretty awesome essays on it, you should check them out". All of which would have also have let me know that you're actually reading. ;)

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

I guess I could have. Apparently, however, I am a schmoe.

[independence1776]

I feel the same way about the comic that you do. I can appreciate both sides, but there is a sad truth to it. I met one of my neighbors a couple weeks ago (I think she was 12), and she'd forgotten her keys for the house, so she asked to use the phone. And she stayed over while waiting for one of her parents to drive over to the house. And one of the first questions she asked was if I had a Wii. I told her no, she asked what I did for fun, and I said read. And surprise, surprise, she isn't a big reader.

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

On many mornings, when my aunt and uncle and I go to breakfast, all three of us will be reading while we eat. It's sometimes interesting and instructive to observe the reactions of others to a table full of people eating and reading in public.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Although I can at least understand people's astonishment at seeing three people... going out for breakfast... and then each reading for him- or herself.

I mean, I'm a big reader, but if I saw three people going out for food and reading at the table, all of them, not just the kids among them (who naturally get bored if the grown-ups take ages to eat or if the food takes long to arrive), I'd be weirded out too. Unless it's the cafeteria at a bookstore. Going out for breakfast (or any other meal) kind of implies social interaction for me, as in, talking to the other people at the table (other than reading out funny or profound bits from the book, as it were). If I want to read through breakfast, I just stay home. So I'd say that others' reaction to a table full of people eating and reading is not exactly indicative of said others' inclination to read (or not)...

[independence1776]

Oh, please explain. You can't just hint at it. *puppy dog eyes*

When we were growing up, my parents had to forbid my sister and I from bringing books into resturants. And at home, we had rules about which meals we could read at and which we couldn't-- breakfast and lunch, fine. Dinner only if it's pizza or similar. Because at least three of the four of us would have had books, and that makes the table a wee bit crowded.