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ProllyInfamousyesterday at 8:56 PM1 replyview on HN

"You must learn the rules so you can properly break them." —paraphrasing Picasso

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As blacksheep of an intellectual family (lawyers, politicians, engineers), I've spent the majority of my employment around fellow bluecollars.

Despite my education (left medschool, decades ago) it scares my family when I speak in the colloquial jargon of my electrician co-workers. If I don't codeswitch back into the grammatically correct language of our upbringing, my brothers value what I have to say less ("what you said sounds dumb even though I understood you better").

Isn't the whole purpose of language to communicate the realities of World? As their brother, I think they mostly write to obfuscate intentions... I prefer the honesty of pure dumb.


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toleranceyesterday at 9:18 PM

> "You must learn the rules so you can properly break them.”

Paraphrasing a similar remark, I think I pulled from "sed & awk” [1]: A reference can teach you the rules, but they don’t show you how to really use them. There's the difference between reading the rules of a sport and actually playing the game.

Tangent: I’m beginning to question how broad the line is between a “rule breaker” and an acute student of tradition at odds a sort of institutionalized inertia. Maybe this “Words with Spaces” guy is on to something.

> Isn't the whole purpose of language to communicate the realities of World? As their brother, I think they mostly write to obfuscate intentions... I prefer the honesty of pure dumb.

This may speak to the significance of the court jesters of the past. And perhaps the rise of virtue signaling today?

[1]: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/sed-awk/1565922255/

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