Comment by pwdisswordfish2
5 years ago
https://collapseos.org/why.html
"That being said, I don't consider it unreasonable to not believe that collapse is likely to happen by 2030, so please, don't feel attacked by my beliefs."
Triple negative? Quadruple negative? (If we count the second "don't".)
Compare something like:
"I consider it reasonable to believe that collapse is unlikely to happen by 2030, so please, don't feel attacked by my beliefs."
It is almost as if the grammatical structure reflects the life perspective of the author.
I don't really want to participate in developing this silly argument, but people making such comments should always consider the possibility that there is a reason for somebody to say things the way they do, and that your "simplification" in fact loses the point of what author is trying to say.
So let me translate for you.
He doesn't "consider it reasonable to believe that collapse is unlikely to happen by 2030", in fact he believes that given the importance of the matter, he is better to assume the scenario, in which his project will turn out to be life-saving. But if it doesn't seem likely to you, that collapse will happen before 2030, and you don't believe the evidence supporting that claim, he wouldn't call you silly (unreasonable) for that, so we (he and you) can work on the project together even if our forecasts are different, don't worry about that too much.
This is the perfect comment - pedantic, snarky, and more focused on the superficial features of the article than the content, mixed in with some grammatical pseudo-psychology. Check, check, check, and check! This is peak tediousness. Well done!
>It is almost as if the grammatical structure reflects the life perspective of the author.
That seems like a perfectly valid thing for grammatical structure to do, although this one tripped me up admittedly.
Hmmm, let's see if I can make it worse:
"That being said, I don't consider it unreasonable to not believe that collapse is unlikely to not happen by 2030"
There's a difference between “not unreasonable” and “reasonable”.
Can you provide more details?
It's the difference between "not crazy" (ie, "you don't agree with me, and that's okay") and "sane" (ie, "I'm wrong here").
There's a difference between "x is not negative" and "x is positive" (¬(x < 0) ⇏ (x > 0)). Why shouldn't a similar subtlety (or a larger one) exist in prosaic language?
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“not unreasonable” expands to “You could provide reasons that seem valid, even if I don't agree that they support your conclusion.”
“reasonable” expands to something more like “The reasons you have provided support your conclusion.”
“reasonable” can work in this case, but it doesn't state as clearly that the speaker disagrees with your conclusions.
In a more general sense the “not un-” pattern is a marker for something that is qualitatively similar to the corresponding simple positive attribute (e.g. “reasonable” or “popular”) but not to the extent of the category of things fitting that simple positive attribute. That is, category “reasonable” is a strict subset of category “not unreasonable”.
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