Rug Burn Junky on 1/12/2009 at 20:03
Quote Posted by steo
So the entirety of your argument is that pattern recognition is easier in text than face to face?
I wouldn't say the entirety, but it's the crux of it. It's pretty simple really, which is why I'm flummoxed that this is even an issue.
Quote Posted by D'Juhn Keep
This would be fantastic, someone make it happen.
Thief13x and SubJeff must be up there.
Nah, T13x is small potatoes. Recent but not noteworthy. He's no Sypha or Nethawk, or old school fett for that matter.
Aerothorn on 1/12/2009 at 20:16
I had one or two in my day, though it was more of a "no you are a jerk" sort of thing than an actual argument about anything of substance. The follys of internet-youth!
I would like to say that it supports RBJ's point that I feel completely on the ball in this debate, precisely BECAUSE I have seen so many of these debates play out with RBJ - I have his tone/style down pat and nine ten out of ten the arguer ends up taking this shaky position of moral superiority combined with poorly convincing dismissiveness.
All said though these sorts of points/ideas are exactly what I was looking for when I made this topic.
Kolya on 1/12/2009 at 20:45
We're talking social interactions here, under false pretences even (sarcasm), and you want to reduce it down to this one theory of pattern recognition. Fine. At least you should get your parameters right then. Sarcasm - as a pattern in a PR test - would be a pattern rather difficult to distinguish. And you're making the point that less data would make the recognition easier. That might well be true from the point of the observer, but at the same time you would miss more patterns, because the potentially to be caught sum of patterns is still the same as in any RL situation.
Said differently, with more data the recognition might not be as easy but you'd catch more of the available patterns. And I think making as many successful acts of communication as possible is what we're aiming at, right?
Wait you don't have to answer that last question. Aimed at you it was pure sarcasm.
Rug Burn Junky on 1/12/2009 at 21:03
Keep knocking down those strawmen. It's going to get you places.
kidmystik101 on 1/12/2009 at 21:36
hey i've got an idea why don't both of you shut the fuck up. YES you can pick patterns in text conversations such as here on ttlg but it's also easier to detect sarcasm in RL (and really how can you not agree with this). I mean, you're saying that you can detect sarcasm from patterns in the author, but what if nobody knows the author? You can't. It's lost, and everyone is like "Hey! That guy is a douchefuck! Lets run him off the boards!". In RL purely the tone of voice used AUTOMATICALLY denotes sarcasm. Regardless of who made the comment.
Aerothorn on 1/12/2009 at 21:42
A. You're assertion that it is IMPOSSIBLE to detect sarcasm from an unknown author seems pretty far-fetched to me. There is such a thing as masterful sentence construction.
B. Tone of voice does not necessarily denote sarcasm. Sometimes people use tones that may seem sarcastic but the tone is, in fact, not intentional; other times sarcastic tones are used and missed by the viewer. I mean, that's kind of stating the obvious, but you make it sound like it's a shoe-in. It's not. Particularly with the less socially capable (autistics etc.)
Aerothorn on 1/12/2009 at 21:46
A conversation with the person who served as the impetus for this topic:
Friendl: oooo mg
Friend: wow
Friend: what is a rug burn junky anyways?
Friend: i'd like to know
Me: (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rug_burn)
Friend: i know what rug burn is silly
Friend: so its someone who loves getting rug burns or just gets them all the time?
Me: It's ambiguous
Friend: WOW
Me: presumably it's from massive amounts of carpet sex
Friend: can anything in your forum NOT be ambiguous?
hopper on 2/12/2009 at 00:05
Kolya, I have a little anecdote for you that perhaps can help make it clear to you why it makes good sense to say that by reducing the number of information channels your brain has to process its ability to process the remaining channels increases - which is really the point being made.
I'm a Norwegian who's been living in Germany for 20 years. Norwegian is my native language, but I feel pretty confident when I say that if you heard me talking without knowing that, you wouldn't guess I'm not a native German. This hasn't always been the case, of course. A few years ago, people would sometimes say things like, "Where are you from? You have a slight accent, but I can't put my finger on it", or "Are you a foreigner, by the way?".
The funny thing is that they would say it strikingly more often if I talked to them on the phone than in person. The explanation for this is obvious: Deprived of the visual inputs they'd be getting by seeing me, the expression on my face, the tilt of my head, my posture, etc., they were reduced to processing my voice, which they then were able to do more carefully. They more easily noticed something that was there all the time, but otherwise often went unnoticed, because they were better able to cope with the reduced input.
Now with the communication pattern discussion we're having here it's the same thing. Of course you won't be better able to detect sarcasm the fewer information cues you have. Nobody said that. But when the information load your brain has to process decreases, it is better able to handle whatever information is left, appreciate subtler cues that otherwise go unnoticed like verbal communication patterns, and thereby partially make up for the information loss.
Really, why do you make this out to be such a controversial statement?
Scots Taffer on 2/12/2009 at 00:15
Quote Posted by Aerothorn
snip chat log
[rbj]Kill yourself.[/rbj]
That's fairly unambiguous.
Kolya on 2/12/2009 at 00:35
Hopper, this is in no way similar to someone trying to convey a sarcastic remark in RL or on the net. As a Norwegian you don't look foreign to Germans but still have a slight accent.
That's as if someone said something sarcastic while giving absolutely neutral signs in voice, face and gesture. That would work better on the phone or net, yes. But it's a made up scenario that has nothing to do with how people use sarcasm in real life.
And that's the problem with this whole idea of applying pattern recognition principles to social interactions. It just doesn't fit. You have to leave out so much, that the model gives no valid results anymore.
