pet peeve thread

[Al_U_Card]

Toilet paper is the nec plus ultra of that kind of dilemma. Ply, single or double roll, # of sheets.... likely the most vital use of math learned in school ;)

[y66]

Saying we must do such and such to "move forward" when the speaker has no idea where "forward" will take him and others relative to the nearest cliff. This seems to be increasing.

[Winstonm]

This seems to be increasing.

 

Seems as if moving forward is moving forward.

[gwnn]

(Bridge) arguments of the form

 

If you do A, B might happen.

You don't want B to happen.

Therefore, you shouldn't do A.

Also in a slightly different form:

 

"A causes X amount of harm" (probabilistically or not)

"B is an alternative to A"

"therefore, let's do B" (without checking what amount of harm B would do)

 

Worse, even when you show that B in fact causes more harm than A but people use the "best is the enemy of the good" argument of "well, A and B both cause harm so what's the difference?"

 

For example, some vegans eat plants to reduce the suffering of animals, but meat eaters sometimes retort by "well, there *are* mice killed on plant farms, so how are you any better?"

[gwnn]

Saying we must do such and such to "move forward" when the speaker has no idea where "forward" will take him and others relative to the nearest cliff. This seems to be increasing.

Reminds me of this "going forward" rant (I know, it's not really the same issue):

[y66]

Reminds me of this "going forward" rant (I know, it's not really the same issue):

Now we're getting somewhere.

[Fluffy]

Whinning threads that get over thousand replies.

[gwnn]

Whinning threads that get over thousand replies.

Superfluous double consonants, especially if they lead to real ambiguity.

[mycroft]

Whinning threads that get over thousand replies.

Oh, just get over it.</notserious>

[Zelandakh]

Oh, just get over it.</notserious>

Slash tags without matching opening tags. ;)

[gwnn]

"Special offers just for you" emails from Amazon or similar sites. I just bought The Hunger Games trilogy for 21 euros online and 2 weeks later I get a great email offering me each of the three books separately for 10-12 euros (all on sale, of course) because these are items purchased by people who ordered the box set. Huh.

So I bought a laptop through Amazon last week. Why on earth do they think I want to buy another one today? I don't get it, can't they see I paid already and received it? Are they just trying to show me better offers so I return the one I just got (surely that can't be a net win for them)? Or am I missing something obvious.

[Vampyr]

"Underwhelmed" is really getting on my nerves. It was pretty annoying when people used it humorously, but now people think it is a real word that means something. You can even find it defined in online dictionaries. Ugggh.

 

But I guess this sort of thing happens when words take on a different usage. "Overwhelmed" has been used in a figurative sense for a very long time. So in a way it is normal, in this usage, for it to have an opposite. "Underwhelmed" does not have a literal meaning, but there are probably other words like that which we don't even notice anymore.

[jandrew]

Well!

 

I have to say that I am especially underwhelmed by the fact that Amazon never, never, ever send me unsolicited emails with special offers.

[onoway]

The insistence that people be "supportive" even when it isn't deserved, such as passing kids in school when they have handed in no assignments and attended few if any classes. I just dropped out of a group where someone posted an survey ( apparently on grant money, yet! ) which was supposedly designed to learn what prairie farmers and gardeners grew. When I looked at it, the survey included all the Canadian Provinces AND Territories EXCEPT Saskatchewan which is decidedly a prairie province, whereas Nova Scotia and the Yukon e.g. are decidedly not. I took exception to this and learned that it wasn't even the prairie provinces she was supposedly interested in, but only B.C.! which is also decidedly not a prairie province.

 

This really really annoyed me especially because lately I have been listening to interviews with people who supposedly know such things talking about fake, sloppy or nonexistent research being used to determine laws and policies, especially in the Pharma world. What they are saying rings true when you think that according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, on average two-hundred and ninety people in the United States are killed by prescription drugs every day .(Starfield, B. (2000). The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Vol 284, No 4. Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health). Successful lawsuits adding up to billions of dollars awarded against at least three big pharma companies, Merck, Baxter and Pfizer, certainly suggest that the research leading to drug approval is not exactly top quality to say the least.

 

When I took the " research" design to task, (not the author but her "work") there was a sarcastic response from the author of the study, and several people told me I should have messaged her privately, gently pointed out her mistakes, tentatively suggested maybe she should correct things. Nobody at all suggested that she should take any responsibility whatever for her sloppiness. I roared at them all privately and quit the group. Obviously a teacher or mentor would do that for a child in elementary school but it should hardly be required for such basic errors for a grant supported or indeed any university research study. I'm getting cranky, it seems :)

[kenberg]

"Underwhelmed" is really getting on my nerves. It was pretty annoying when people used it humorously, but now people think it is a real word that means something. You can even find it defined in online dictionaries. Ugggh.

 

But I guess this sort of thing happens when words take on a different usage. "Overwhelmed" has been used in a figurative sense for a very long time. So in a way it is normal, in this usage, for it to have an opposite. "Underwhelmed" does not have a literal meaning, but there are probably other words like that which we don't even notice anymore.

 

Apparently we must live with it. From the Washington Post

 

 

For decades, tourists have visited the historic home of James Monroe outside of Charlottesville, Va., and have encountered the quaint — if not underwhelming — residence of the nation’s fifth president.

 

I wonder if something could be called whelming, neither under nor over. The wedding was a whelming affair. I may try it out.

[Vampyr]

Apparently we must live with it. From the Washington Post

 

 

 

 

I wonder if something could be called whelming, neither under nor over. The wedding was a whelming affair. I may try it out.

 

Possibly. Literally, whelm is little different from overwhelm, but few will know that!

[Phil]

There is a set of words that I use but get tripped up by my spellchecker.

 

- Agendize

- Incentivize

 

Am I a neanderthal?

[mike777]

There is a set of words that I use but get tripped up by my spellchecker.

 

- Agendize

- Incentivize

 

Am I a neanderthal?

 

If you are American then yes your often, very often have Neanderthal genes...to answer your question...yes

[Vampyr]

There is a set of words that I use but get tripped up by my spellchecker.

 

- Agendize

- Incentivize

 

Am I a neanderthal?

 

I think the problem is that you are using these words.

[Zelandakh]

- Agendize

- Incentivize

Neither of these words exists in the English I know. ;)

[kenberg]

There is a set of words that I use but get tripped up by my spellchecker.

 

- Agendize

- Incentivize

 

Am I a neanderthal?

 

You get tripized by your spell checker maybe? It is trying to un-neanderthize you. Just disablize it, establize who is boss.

[mycroft]

There is a set of words that I use but get tripped up by my spellchecker.

 

- Agendize

- Incentivize

 

Am I a neanderthal?

No, you're a Suit. Try installing the en-Manglement language pack - it will synergize your dynamic and orientate your vision. :-)

[gwnn]

Replying to a survey with "oh yea? they asked only 1000 people out of millions! that's ridiculous!"

 

This is somehow even more annoying because it is a superficially very convincing argument and you can't dismiss it without explaining sampling theory and confidence intervals in detail. By the time I'm finished, the other party will have moved on to some other topic.

[shyams]

Replying to a survey with "oh yea? they asked only 1000 people out of millions! that's ridiculous!"

 

This is somehow even more annoying because it is a superficially very convincing argument and you can't dismiss it without explaining sampling theory and confidence intervals in detail. By the time I'm finished, the other party will have moved on to some other topic.

Would you really attempt to explain to the other person in such a situation? I'm impressed by your patience and tolerance!

If I were in the situation, I'd simply brand the other person a duffer and move on.

[gwnn]

Yes. Well, at least normally I do so because I used to be one of those people - at least in the sense that I had the intuition that asking just 1000 people from a million can't be enough. In fact (not writing to you shyams in particular, just for people who might not realize this), if we ask 1000 out of 1M and got 50% of yeses, the confidence interval is somewhere between 47-53% or 46-54% at 95 or 99% level. The funny thing is that (essentially) the same confidence interval applies if the total population were 100M or any larger number {of course in real life larger populations will be more difficult to sample representatively}.