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I assumed, you tried to make a point, that you are less selfish or a better person in general if you want to have children. When I say "you are a better person" I am talking about people in general.

@Someone here Why are you an anti natalist ,what is the main reason? The avoidance of suffering, or what other principle(s) are you using here? Creation of life doesn't change the selfish aspect though. I would argue that in 99.9999% of the cases, people want to have children because of selfish reasons.

Sure, and he should hop on some TRT and some steroids too - to get the real viking looks.

@Kksd74628 Give us your argument(s), where you demonstrate, that dictionary use is better than any other tool. Whatever argument(s) you will give, dictionary use will be a minority compared to the other tools.

Its not that everyone has totally differing definitions. some people have less and some people have more differing definitions, but again we can quckly and easily settle that problem with explaining our own definitions. I thought, that you were suggesting here that we must use dictionaries when we communicate, or when we have a disagreement. I still don't agree with that , because in most of that cases disagreements and misunderstandings can be settled with other tools. We can agree on basic definitions without reaching for a dictionary.

Yeah this is a good point, but we still don't need to use a dictionary definition. We can just give our own clear definition, that way people will know and understand why we use the way we use it, and what we mean by it. Again, one of the biggest problem with the dicitionary use, is that the person who use it, need to change his/her way of thinking and talking about a particular subject, because that meaning now will slightly or totally differ from his/her original use of it.

Yes, but we can settle this problem by asking for definitions, that way we can clearly see how the other person is using that definition, so we will understand their thought process better, but if we are quickly jumping on a dictionary, then both of us will probably need to rethink our thoughtprocess, because the word that is used has a totally or slightly different meaning now. None of your arguments are suggesting or strengthening the point, that we should use a dictionary to settle disagreements or to elevate our ability to understand the other person. - So it seems to me, that you agree with me at least on that point.

Can you explain why do we need to use a dictionary here in order to understand each other? I am suggesting here, that there are better tools to clear things up and to understand each other, other than using a fucking dictionary every time.

How is that most intellectuals, debaters, normal people can understand each other clearly and fine and settle disagreements, without ever [or very rarely] having the need to use a dictionary?

? ? ? ?, Very much appreciate your serious effort - that you are so willing to have a serious discussion with dumb people like us. So you had to look up the definition in a dictionary ,because you couldnt desribe and summarize the concept on your own. You implied it yourself - that there is only one right meaning to everything , so the conclusion is that you didn't learn the definition of communism beforehand. - so who is the uneducated here? This wasnt even the thing that we were disagreeing on. What is your steelman version of mine and what is your steelman version of Carl's position.

Funny thing is that you are not operating on dictionary definitions at all. You are in your own world with your own made up definitions, and you use those definitions to think about things - just as anyone else. Proof is your communism definition. That was not a dictionary definition that was your own definition - and thats all good.

About the fact, that a lot of people here are disagreeing with you, and your first assumption is that - "people who disagree with me must be dumb" and not that "Wait, maybe i am missing something, or let me ask clarifying question or let me find out what we disagree on and why"

Why do you assume, that people who disagree with you - are dumb? I have not seen you ever making a humble post on this forum, or a post that would show that you are capable of self reflection.

@Carl-Richard Basically if Destiny thinks that in a certain conversation any of these words (fascist, racist, Nazi) would undermine his goal, he won't use any of these words, but he willing to use these words in a separate conversation and in a separate context where is goal is not undermined at all. (At least thats how I interpreted what Scholar was saying).

Yeah, totally. If two people or three people disagree with you, the only and most plausible explanation has to be, that those people must have misinterpreted something.

Must be , because of the different agendas and different defintions .

@Kksd74628 You havent established at all, how having the same ideology or the same ideas is directly connected to having the same set of definitions you just assumed it, and now try to use it to explain everything with it. Do we disagree right now, because we are using different definitions?

@Kksd74628 Having the same definitions or using the same definitions has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing. We can clarify and discuss definitions beforehand and still end up disagreeing. We can have the same set of definitions and we can still have radically different ideologies. Just to make my point stronger: I and @Danioover9000 disagree on many things, so I dont think your rule works or have strong explanatory power.

@Kksd74628 One big reason why we use our own definitions and not the dictionary is because we think in terms of our own definitions and not in terms of dictionary definitions. So if you want to force people to use the dictionary definition, then you actually force people to think differently.

Often times how it is used is not aligned with the dictionary , also which dictionary should it be aligned with?

https://ideas.ted.com/20-words-that-once-meant-something-very-different/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change

I agree that language is not 100% abstract, but it isn't 100% rigid either, thats what makes it complex. Carl have a very good and very clear response to the 'what it actually is' idea. I reject the idea of a "universally correct definition". We can refer to a dictionary but that dictionary still wont be universally correct. Every definition have some number of words in it and each of those words also have different definitions and we can go down and around like that forever. So we have a big web of words and we have our own mental model of these words and concepts based on our own experiences. When you say that we should refer to a dictionary , the problem is that , that dictionary will only give a very vague idea of what that particular thing is. Why is it vague? Because it assumes, that the reader uses all of the underlying concepts and words (that used for definition making) the same way as defined in the dictionary. - so ideally to be 100% precise we should look up a 1000 different words in the same dictionary or even more to get the 'right' mental model thats needed to make sense of dictionary concepts and words.

Okay so what you have is a prescription (how it should be) what I was talking about was more of a description (how it is). I might agree with your prescription, but we need to be aware, that most of our learning process, and our learning of our first language is more about having an experience or experiences with a certain word or a concept and a lot less about looking up a concept in a dictionary. I don't know how producitve and useful it would be , if we would ignore all our experiences and we would only focus on the rigid definitions in a dictionary.

You don't redefine a word, you make sure that you two are on the same page, you can't always assume that your convo partner will have the same defintion in mind as you. I don't think language and our use of language in general, is as defined and as rigid as you think it is. There are many concepts that are based on feelings and intuition, because its impossible to define anything in a 100% accurate way, and that is one reason why there are sometimes multiple definitions and multiple meanings to a concept or a word. Some cultures use a word differently than others, is that bad or is that innacurate? I don't think so, also who is to say which dictionary should we refer to when we have a discussion, and why? For example when you use the word 'table' i don't just have a concept in my mind "thing that has 4 legs and probably made of wood" but i have many pictures in my head and i have an abstract way to identify a table. A particular table might have 3 legs or might have 2 legs or more, but your definition of 'table' won't contain the concept of 'table' in its entirety. English language is a perfect example to show that 1 word can have multiple definitions and meanings depending on the context. If I stay with the word of 'table' that can mean multiple things and even 1 dictionary will give multiple definitions to that word, because in reality it has multiple meanings. The Oxford dictionary will give 5 different definitions, but it could give more if it wanted to, but all of those definitions are based on the context of the word. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/table_1?q=table The reason why I know what you refer to when you say the word 'table' is not because I looked up the dictionary definition, but because of my intuition and my mental baggage[my ideas about it, based on my experience with tables ] of that word. I also look at the context of the word and that way, I make an assumption that you want to use that word in one special way. Just think about it :one word could be used as an adjective as a verb or as a noun etc. I would agree with making more words and with the creation of new words and concepts, however if there are no new words yet, you have to be aware, that people will use words in potentially different ways compared to you and you have to keep that in mind when you have a convo with someone, and when you feel like that you two are not on the same page.

@Kksd74628 In most of the cases, we don't use the hardcore original dictionary definition of a word, when we have a discussion about something. ( especially in cases, where the dictionary gives multiple definitions for the same word). We often have an underlying assumption, that our communication partner use the same definition as us, but in a lot of cases this assumption isn't true, and it leads to misunderstanding and miscommunication. Defining words in a conversation, is often a good way to prevent miscommunication and misunderstanding and to gain clarity.