How often have you heard some hagiographically overambitious (or just maybe purposefully devious?) individual hold forth along the lines of "Wally's contribution to this project cannot be underestimated!" Slippery things, double negatives --- especially when combined with an inability to distinguish the possible from the acceptable. WFL On 3/10/16, Michael Kleber <michael.kleber@gmail.com> wrote:
I think "X is less evil than Y" is unambiguous.
Which is too bad, because I like ambiguity more than most people.
--Michael
On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 3:14 PM, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
inherently ambiguous in English?
After all, if evil is a negative thing, then wouldn't "the lesser of two negatives" would be the worser thing ?
Perhaps teaching coding in public schools might be a positive thing after all...
Jus' sayin'...
(Or perhaps people misheard the advice as "the lessOr of two evils" ???)
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