
You can’t prove I meant X - Petiver
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n08/clare-bucknell/you-can-t-prove-i-meant-x
======
Veen
> "this sentence could mean y as well as x so you can’t prove I meant x"

It's interesting that a lot of online debate and media commentary uses the
opposite technique:

> "this sentence could—with varying degrees of plausibility—mean bad thing y
> as well as good thing x, so you can't prove you didn't really mean to say
> the bad thing." The principle of anti-charity.

~~~
pjc50
There's a big prisoner's dilemma thing going on. If you're charitable, _and
the people you 're discussing with are too_, you can have better discussions.

If you're operating in an environment like the internet where you can more or
less guarantee that there will be one comment based on the the worst possible
interpretation of what you said, being charitable in advance just makes things
worse for you. You're playing "cooperate" with an endless stream of
"defectors". Trolling has always been "defect" in this environment.

Hence the value in having more closed environments for discussion. HN is open
enough that people can make throwaway accounts and use them for valid points,
and closed enough that the more obvious trolls get downvote-hammered quickly.

~~~
TheSoftwareGuy
I've found it to be pretty effective to simply not engage with those who keep
taking the worst possible interpretations of your (or others) arguments. It
sort of simulates an environment where everyone is charitable.

In other words, "Don't feed the trolls"

~~~
resonantjacket5
That's alright sometimes. But there's usually a 100 (or something) readers to
1 posters ratio. If none of the "trolls" are contested that leaves the
impression that it's a legitimate opinion.

I don't think the option of "don't feed the trolls" really works in such
scenarios.

~~~
lonelappde
In those cases you are talking to the audience, not to the trolls. It doesn't
matter what the trolls meant; it matters what you say.

------
1996
This is a long yet fascinating read on how poets hacked libel laws to push
their ideas.

For example:

But now, go search all Europe round

Among the savage monsters crown’d,

With vice polluting every throne

(I mean all kings except our own).

Thanks to the last line, the poet could claim plausible deniability.

Even better: due to semantic evolutions, the mere "imagining" that before
meant plotting made thought crimes an attack on monarchy.

Therefore, by saying the poet was attacking the king, the prosecutors would be
guilty themselves of such "imagining".

------
commandlinefan
There's an interpretation of the biblical book of Revelation that it was
written as a "disguised" attack on the Roman empire:
[https://www.educationalcoin.com/blog/the-mystery-of-the-
book...](https://www.educationalcoin.com/blog/the-mystery-of-the-book-of-
revelation-which-roman-emperor-is-the-antichrist/)

~~~
asveikau
Very interesting that this page talks about serious stuff like which emporer
slaughtered whom and then says you can buy those coins, the very mark of the
beast!

~~~
commandlinefan
Ha - I just googled it and didn't realize this was a "commercial" site. I
can't remember where I first read it, but I see a lot of other references.

------
Etheryte
Just as a heads up, if you have cookies disabled for unknown domains, this
page gives you an endless redirect loop.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
[https://outline.com/Cu4sHx](https://outline.com/Cu4sHx)

------
mnw21cam
"Please enable Javascript to read the full article".

How about no.

~~~
rendaw
> We notice you're using an Ad blocker

No, I'm using a Javascript blocker.

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/Kmhr1](https://archive.md/Kmhr1)

------
pjc50
Two modern equivalents of this kind of thing are the use of euphemisms to
bypass Chinese censorship:
[https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Main_Page](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Main_Page)
and the ever-mutating set of "dog whistles" used by the far right ("fourteen
words" etc.)

The historical background of the 1700s I'm a bit vague on, but it was crucial
for the development of Parliamentary government in the UK through a long
series of succession crises from the civil war onwards that only really ended
with the childless death of the younger Charles Stuart in 1788.

Essentially there were two incompatible criteria for English monarchs to be
publicly accepted: "not Catholic" and "not foreign".

~~~
1996
> ("fourteen words" etc.)

This is signaling through lingo (keywords), very different from this article,
yet also worth studying during this lockdown.

If I simply replied "88 bro", the average reader may not click, and think I
was just saying I was born in 1988, like you, and we are maybe "birth year
brothers".

Yet to the initiated, it would signal that I have some very special political
ideas! Once you have started learning that, you will see custom license plates
very differently!

As hackers, we should learn to decode such telltales, to know who may mean us
harm.

Here's another one that may look totally innocent: blood type tatooed 8 inches
above the elbow.

~~~
baud147258
I get the 88 thing, but not the blood type tatooed 8 inches above the elbow,
care to explain?

~~~
michaelt
"SS blood group tattoos (German: Blutgruppentätowierung) were worn by members
of the Waffen-SS in Nazi Germany during World War II to identify the
individual's blood type. [...] It was a small black ink tattoo located on the
underside of the left arm, [...] placed roughly 20 cm (8 inches) above the
elbow."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_blood_group_tattoo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_blood_group_tattoo)

I have no idea whether it's popular with modern neo-nazis.

~~~
baud147258
ah, thank you. That clears that up. Though tattooing your blood type on your
skin seems a good idea.

------
0xff00ffee
This is a fairly dense article, but it is a really profound intersection of
"hacking", "reason", and "context". Hacking a language to sound reasonable
while delivering a side-channel message through an established context. I
guess I never really thought of poets and writers as hackers, but now it
clicked into focus.

