Comment by godelski
3 years ago
Allow me to introduce you to the dictionary[0]
Vehicle (noun)
1. a means of carrying or transporting something
...such as
... a: motor vehicle
... b: a piece of mechanized equipment
2 : an agent of transmission : carrier
3: a medium through which something is expressed, achieved, or displayed
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You're thinking of specifically a __motorized__ vehicle. Which is a different thing than "vehicle". I think you'll agree that a bicycle and skateboard carry people and transport them. This is the same reason a wagon violates the rule. Almost everything on there was a vehicle. I think the only ambiguous ones are paper airplane, matchbox car, toy boat, and kite and I said those weren't because they can't transport things and are not motorized. But hey, technically they can be a medium through which someone expresses their joy.
No painting or dancing in the park.
“No rhetorical vehicles in the park” is … quite the interpretation
It's honestly blowing my mind right now that anyone could interpret as a bike as anything but a vehicle. What else would it be? What is a railroad handcar? What is a paddleboat? What is a cycle saloon?
It is a mix of pedantry, iamverysmart, ackshully, treating dictionaries as prescriptive (the English dictionary is _descrptive_ and the French dictionary is _prescriptive_) and a bunch of other nonsense.
The entire world agrees bicycles are vehicles and it's encoded in the law almost everywhere. This is no true Scotsman, sure, but IMO if you're trying to argue a bicycle is NOT a vehicle you're only doing it to argue and flex your vast knowledge of the English dictionary to randoms on the internet. It's a completely unreasonable position to hold.
8 replies →
By this rule I can't bring a newspaper into the park
> 3. a medium through which something is expressed, achieved, or displayed
A "gotcha" comment, but that only adds to the author's point. Which luckily this wasn't one of the examples. Though see back to my comment about the items I said no for (that aren't confused for being outside the part like the ISS)
So no one can bring their legs into the park, as they are a means of transporting things?
"Carrier" is also a very broad term, no human carrying anything is allowed in the park then.
I know this is a "gotcha" comment, but it actually only adds to the author's point: language is fuzzy and imprecise. Moreso, that we assume it has far higher precision than it actually does.
We can think of communication as having 3 main components. 1) the intended concept being intended to convey. This is in the person's head. 2) The fuzzy compression mode (language) that is used to convey said thought. Be that words, writing, or interpretive dance. 3) The fuzzy decoder that turns the language into a thought in another being's head. This is filled with priors and assumptions that fill in many of the gaps.
The thing about this is that we usually learn to speak in pretty localized groups, meaning that our priors align and we have a lot of good faith (attempting to interpret intent rather than interpreting the words). But with a larger audience we have higher variance that makes what is obvious a priori a disastrous outcome. "Everybody knows" is not something everyone knows. https://xkcd.com/1053/
Are shoes a vehicle ?
are the shoes carrying you? Or are you carrying the shoe?