Comment by FunHearing3443
18 hours ago
Is there a way their question could have been phrased that would have not drawn you to make that assumption, which seems to be an ethos attack, or are you predisposed to reply in such a way about any philosophical evolution question?
When people say /I'm not (.*?), but (.*)/, they invariably are what they're claiming they aren't. That's what that phrase means. For example, we've all heard it a million times from people defending their vote for Donald Trump. There's even a wikipedia page about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_not_racist,_but...
If you really mean $2, then just say $2, you don't have to preface it with "I'm not $1, but". That's a waste of words, beating around the bush, a rhetorical shield, that reveals that you really are $1 and you feel the need to be defensive about it.
The word "but" in that context means the thing before it is false, just air escaping from the folds of your fat, and you can ignore everything before the "but".
"But" is a contrastive conjunction, signaling the clause before "but" is expected, socially required, or reputationally protective, and the clause after "but" is the actual communicative payload. It means to discount or ignore $1 and evaluate the speaker by $2. Saying “I’m not $1, but $2” does not strengthen $2, it does't make $2 safer or clearer, it just signals defensiveness, and undermines credibility.
Again, this is a discussion about psychedelic mushrooms, fairytale-like hallucinations, and machine elves, so woo away all you want!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO2dPIdEaR4