"You're the most beautiful girl in the world" and Wittgensteinian Language Games

Americans don't know how much they had to compromise in this video by using shish-kebabs instead of what a new zealander would really mean when someone at a party says "do you want to get a kebab with me", which are instead like, the turkish version of burritos, instead of mince, beans and cheese; turkish meat, hummus, veges and wider choice of sauces. They're a fixture of nightlife and tend to be open late.

I am so here for this comment section

I didn't, but I often want to downvote articles that seem to be lecturing a group who wouldn't read or be changed by the article. I know a lot of idiots will upvote such articles out of a belief that by doing so they are helping or attacking that group. On reddit, it often felt like that is the main reason people upvote things, to engage indirectly with others, and it kills the sub, clogging it with posts that the people who visit the sub are not themselves getting anything from.

If you engaged with the target group successfully, they would upvote the post themselves, so a person should generally never upvote on others' behalf, because they don't actually know what would work for them.

Unfortunately, the whole anonymous voting thing makes it impossible to properly address voting norm issues like this. So either I address it improperly by making deep guesses about why people are voting, in this way (no, don't enjoy) or I prepare to depose lesswrong.com with a better system (that's what I'm doing)

Too obvious imo, though I didn't downnvote. This also might not be an actual rationalist failure mode; in my experience at least, rationalists have about the same intuition all the other humans have about when something should be taken literally or not.

As for why the comment section has gone berserk, no idea, but it's hilarious and we can all use some fun.

I'd say that it doesn't carve reality at the same places as my understanding. I neither upvoted nor downvoted the post, but had to consciously remember that I have that option at all.

I think that language usage can be represented as vector, in basis of two modes:

1. "The Fiat": words really have meanings, and goal of communication is to transmit information (including requests, promises, etc!),
2. "Non-Fiat": you simply attempt to say a phrase that makes other people do something that furthers your goal. Like identifying with a social group (see Belief as Attire [? · GW]) or non-genuine promises.

(Note 1: if someone asked me what mode I commonly use, I would think. Think hard.)

(Note 2: I've found a whole tag about motivations which produce words - https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/simulacrum-levels! [? · GW] Had lost it for certain time before writing this comment.)

In life, I try to communicate less hyperboles and replace them with non-verbal signs, which do not carry implication of either "the most beautiful" or "more beautiful than everyone around".

I actually upvoted, but mostly because it was a hook for comedy, because it's so common a trope (the surprise value of taking something literally).  If it weren't for that, I'd probably have just passed, rather than downvoting, but I find it pretty low-value overall.

Some mix of "obvious parts are obvious, non-obvious parts are some mix of pretentious and and suspect."  I'd actually enjoy a (somewhat) deeper exploration of your agreement or disagreement with the Wittgenstein framing of this phrase, and the value of invoking cultural tropes.  Personally, this isn't one I'm confident enough to use, but there are other hyperbolic ideas I use for emphasis or humor, and I generally agree that communication is multimodal and contextual, much more than objective semantic content.