Having some difficulty posting this. NEW YORK — "Gaslighting" — mind manipulating, grossly misleading, downright deceitful — is Merriam-Webster's word of the year. … Although easy to understand like propaganda and ‘fake news,’ the abuse is no match for the harder and slower work of documented facts and data. Bob Wilson
Ah.....but who does the "Documenting?" What's the difference between 'data' and 'truth?' "All The News That Fits, We Print!" is a good point source, but you cannot paint a picture with one dot, especially if your palette has only one colour. People are analogue, not digital. D/A converters are a LOT tougher to build than A/D converters - 'eh? Unless, of course, you 'limit the data.' For the littles out there: Gaslight (1944_film)
Harder, we find truth in multiple, independent sources who take different paths to the facts and data. It doesn’t always work and takes time but the accuracy is higher than the alternatives. For example, cold fusion research continues but we’re not seeing an ‘Eurika’ protocol that anyone can follow. Bob Wilson
As a retired electrical engineer who spent a big portion of my career working both directions of analog <=> digital conversion, I must say: Huh?
I still favor the old definition that Merriam-Webster also emphasizes in that piece: : psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one's emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator What they say in the article is that it's been getting looked up a lot more, lately, because people have been using it more to describe other forms of systematic dishonesty that we already have other perfectly good words for. Meanwhile, there are still people who do gaslight in the older sense—it hasn't stopped being a favorite tool of abuse in personal relationships, for example—and we haven't got a lot of other words that mean exactly what it means there.
it is, but it's worn off on me from movies and the like. of course, i have to explain it after using it. still, some things are just too good to ignore.
Gaslighting is effective to the extent it denies that multiple independent routes of confirmation lead to truth. If such denials are seen as plausible, there's the gas. If truth as a word carries too much baggage, consider accuracy instead.
Cantonese is filthy, but is sadly lacking in variety. The guy that used to drive the minibus from Hang Hau MTR (subway) station to Sai Kung was always on the phone to his friends, and everyone on the minibus would hear. He started every sentence with "屌你老母的臭屄" in the way that an American teenager would use "like". "Like, I'm going to the store" from an American teenager would be "屌你老母的臭屄我去商店". Even I as a British person thought he was a bit sweary.
The gas of gaslighting may have been CO or more benignly CO2. The metaphor works by hammering away at 'that which is obvious from many sources' with 'maybe some other things are more accurate instead'. What I find most gassy is that, by repetition, it replaces multiple conforming lines of evidence with narrow motivated 'readings' buttressed only by repetition. And it happens even here in PriusChat. With plausible deniability, and under cover of just asking questions. The affront is against science, I feel. If weak claims repeated outweigh consensus knowledge, the new Dark Ages are upon us. Oh, bother.
"Her majesty's a pretty nice girl But she doesn't have a lot to say." Less so now. "Her majesty's a pretty nice girl But she changes from day to day." Less so now.
That little ditty did not show up unless you had a turntable which didn’t lift the arm off when the needle started in towards centre, after the last track. And considering that last track was Day In The Life, yeah… Anyway, I’d pay extra, for a CD that expunged that sophomoric Easter Egg . Or stick to the record .
