On 08/01/15 12:47, Robert Kaiser wrote: > The main difference is that "you are wrong" sounds like "you are a wrong > person" or "something is wrong with who you are", even more to someone > who is not an English native speaker.
Thing is, that's not what it means in English. KaiRo: "Beijing is the capital of Austria." Gerv: "You are wrong. Vienna is." Am I insulting you? Clearly not. > And as I tried to explain, very often, everyone is actually right from > their own point of view - even if you have a different point of view. In the example above, are you right about the capital of Austria, from your own point of view? To say that you are is to remove any sense of useful meaning from the word "right". Trying to keep off specific examples to avoid derailing the conversation, but: I also think we all need to accept that whether a particular question falls into the category of "right and wrong" vs. "opinion on which reasonable people can disagree" is itself something on which people disagree, and therefore we have to be tolerant of people who use right/wrong language where we personally would not. > On matters of belief (like religion, or which > editor/desktop/OS/country/etc. is "the best") it's a good idea to not > even use words like "right" or "wrong" at all and phrase it in a way > that makes clear that it's personal beliefs/opinions/views and you > respect that others might disagree and there's nothing wrong with that. "Matter of belief" != "matter of opinion and so it doesn't matter what you think". Thinking about it, this may be another thing which people not coming from my perspective find hard to understand - I can see that. I feel another essay coming on. This is an example, actually, of what I mean about learning through disagreement. I'm learning a lot about how my perspective on things is much more opaque to others than I'd realised. Gerv _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
