Quote:
Originally Posted by scheier
I was with synchronic before AsianNit gave this explanation. So now it's clearer what this "contradiction" is about, but it actually makes me even less excited about the book (and I usually love Ed Miller's work).
"Adapt to the player, but continue making the right decisions and don't get out of line out of ego, spite, or whatever reason", that seems like a topic for an article magazine. Knowing some of Ed Miller's previous work, I have to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe that the content is actually better than what the exterior suggests, but he probably tried to be too cute this time around when trying to sell the book.
Ha! Absolutely was a great explanation by AsianNit. It explains it completely ... and all is still consistent. So often a little nuance of specific meaning in a particular use can seem wrong when compared to the bigger picture ... but it can fool you.
Here's one from a Buddhist theorist recently. There are two very similar sayings:
"Let it be" and "Let it go."
One master-type who had been sitting in ashrams for decades, said the first one makes great sense but the second one he didn't get at all. I happened to see this one. It depends on what the "it" is, I said. The "it" is not the event - say cancer or ALS, or whatever - the "it" is your resistance to it. With that realization, the two sentences mean the exact same thing. Yet he had been at loggerheads over it for years.
You don't need to let the actual culprit go - and often times you can't - but you can let your resistance go. He had spent decades objecting to the second saying. But when "Let it go" means "Let the resistance go" ... then that sentiment is intended precisely as the first on ("Let it be"). Be sure you know what your pronouns are referring to is the lesson. No, you can't let ALS go, and it makes an absurdity of the advice to try. But you can let the resistance go ("This shouldn't be happening to me," "I'm supposed to be able to play golf" etc.).
Too long, but the two remind me of each other. A shade of meaning tosses the thing off course. That's why some people think that sentences are like equations: the more precise the values plugged in the more powerful they become. Akin to the Richter scale, the power increases exponentially according to precision.
And AsianNit saw it with no prob.
I think that covers it. Hold the applause.