Comment by galaxyLogic

6 days ago

Another phrase that comes to mind is "Plausible Deniability": By uttering ambiguous sentences you can deny all but one possible meanings of what you say. And talking to different audiences at different times you can claim you didn't mean anything like what your citics are claiming you did.

But I like the idea there is a term for this, be it Straussian Memes or something else. What I didn't quite get is how "self-stabilizing" works?

What I'd like is for TV-anchors to get wise and start asking their interviewees "What EXACTLY do you mean when you use this term ...". But I guess they won't because they too are happy to spread a meme which multiple different communities can like because they understand it in the way they like.

10 comments

galaxyLogic

Reply
ryandv  6 days ago

> Another phrase that comes to mind is "Plausible Deniability": By uttering ambiguous sentences you can deny all but one possible meanings of what you say. And talking to different audiences at different times you can claim you didn't mean anything like what your citics are claiming you did.

This is the core rhetorical tactic of the progressive left in a nutshell. Linguistic superposition, equivocation, Schrodinger's definition - whatever you want to call it, it's the ability to have your cake and eat it too by simply changing your definitions, or even someone else's, post hoc.

Let us take a moment to be reminded of the English Socialism of Orwell and doublespeak.

  • JumpCrisscross  6 days ago

    > the core rhetorical tactic of the progressive left in a nutshell

    I live in Wyoming and have MAGA and ultra-progressive friends.

    Multiple messaging is a hallmark of all elites. Sometimes it’s functional: being able to say something sharp that if repeated is ambiguous is a skill. Anyone who has any power or authority wields it. It is so common to suggest requirement. (Other times, multiple messaging lets one apologise in a public setting without making things awkward.)

    In many respects, it’s an essential feature of commanding language. Compressing multiple meanings into fewer words is the essence of poetry and literature.

    • ryandv  6 days ago

      > In many respects, it’s an essential feature of commanding language. Compressing multiple meanings into fewer words is the essence of poetry and literature.

      Aye, perhaps prompting is the be-all-end-all skill, after all: the ability to distill out an idea into its most concentrated, compressed essence, so it can be diluted, expanded, and reworded ad infinitum by the LLMs.

      brb while I search for the word prompt that generated the universe...

      1 reply →

  • lcuff  6 days ago

    "Core rhetorical tactic of the progressive left". Or the conservative right, depending on which side of this divide one happens to stand on. And speaking of Orwell, he was pointing out the doublespeak of the Fascists, not the socialists.