I know very little about you. I've been talking about the signature shape of your arguments.
And I don't know anything of your motivations. Have you read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"? If so you'll understand that it is possible, indeed sometimes common, for people to take rhetorical stances without actually understanding the position they are taking, out of a reflexive support for their party / faction / coalition of preference. And that those preferences can shape arguments simply to political purposes without actually considering the substance of the question at hand. Indeed people can find themselves in this position without even really realizing it.
Which is why Orwell thought clear language and proper argument so important that he dedicated his life to demonstrating their necessity. Bad arguments an important signal of the possibility of a person so committed to some political purpose in a manner indifferent to the means of achieving that purpose. You could be a political zombie without ever knowing it.
My comment was _right_. "Sense of the Senate" language can, for a layman's usage, constitute law. Your insistence on a point that is wrong, while at the same time eliding that error to some other argument, signals an interest in winning an apparent point rather than in helping people actually understand. This is rhetoric, and at its worst it is very dangerous thing.
I know nothing of your purposes or motives. You may very well be in a state deserving pity more than anything else. But the way you argue is dangerous -- to your country, your community, and to your soul.
I won't speak for Thomas, but I used to teach "Politics and the English Language" in rhetoric and argumentation courses. There are two important things worth pointing out here:
1. Your understanding of the problem domain of language and politics, at least in this post, is incredibly naive. For a rigorous analysis of the subject, try something like Chaïm Perelman's Treatise on Argumentation or one of Ronald Dworkin's books.
2. Your comment being right and Thomas' comment being right aren't mutually exclusive. What he said is correct. What you said is also correct. Your attempt to make your point invalidate his is what's popularly called shifting the goalposts. It's what people do when they want to, as you put it, win points.
Also, as a point of order, your whole shtick of suggesting that someone has taken a position out of blind partisanship without really grasping what's at stake in it yadda yadda -- that's never a constructive way to approach a discussion. Everything you're accusing Thomas of, you're guilty of yourself. Whence Thomas' dismissal, which brings to mind Aristotle:
A man should not enter into discussion with everybody or practice dialectics with the first comer as reasoning always becomes embittered where some people are concerned. Indeed, when an adversary tries by every possible means to to wriggle out of a corner, it is legitimate to strive, by every possible means, to reach the conclusion; but this procedure lacks elegance. -- Topics 8.14.164b
As you are so learned, and Chaïm and Ronald aren't here, perhaps you'd care to offer their more proper reading of Orwell. And as you're so learned, you'll immediately know my remark as a paraphrase, and of whom. Right? Because when I read a book, I do so in such a fashion as to repeat its argument, rather than assign others reading I couldn't do properly in the first place.
Nor can I understand how my reading of Orwell can be "naive". Wrong, maybe. Unless you mean that Orwell argued that these aspects of rhetoric can be deliberately manipulated to bring about otherwise unjustifiable outcomes? And that his chief purpose was to warn others of this manipulation and suggest danger signals of it? I am completely alert to that purpose, and you can be sure my neglect of that theme in my remarks here reflects a very deliberate desire to avoid suggesting anything so ugly of someone about whom I know nothing.
Now as to "moving the goal posts." What I said, from the very start, was that his construction was wrong _for_a_layman_, that it could be right _for_lawyers_, and that the former was here the important context. So my argument acknowledged the sense in which he could be right and dismissed it.
And so forth. I don't really care what you've taught. Bring an _argument_. Because your pompous _assertions_ don't do much more than piss me off.
Nah. Every claim he made is demonstrably incorrect, with the exception of his initial point that '"Sense of the Senate" language is often important in judicial and / or executive interpretation.' This claim is also incorrect, strictly speaking, but if we're charitable and substitute 'occasionally' for 'often', it at least adds something to the discussion. What it doesn't do is show Thomas to be wrong. "Sense of" resolutions aren't legally binding and rarely, if ever, impact public-facing policy. They do, on occasion, impact government-facing policy, for example SCOTUS recess appointments. The rest of his comments are blather and, while worthy of a good chuckle, are unworthy of response.
"Sense of" clauses often determine the precise allocation of appropriated funds. Indeed _committee_reports_, which lack the dignity of a full vote of either House, or a Presidential signature, are treated by executive departments as determinative of public spending. They are the primary mechanism for designating "pork barrel" spending and thus are treated as the primary targets of lobbying efforts.
I know this because I have worked on those bills.
I do not know the legal or regulatory landscape around telecommunications in nearly such detail. But knowing the importance of such language in a REALLY significant corner, I would be very, very slow to regard any of it as without "impact [on] public facing policy." Not without a very thorough explanation of why exactly it was meaningless, and regarded as such generally throughout the industry.
Again, I don't know the industry. I do know that the making and implementation of law is a very complicated business, where the black and white readings of law do not yield the simple answers one might expect from logical analysis. And I know that in very important corners of government language like this, and still further from law than this, is effectively determinative of federal policy. So blanket claims that "sense of" language are without any real force are "demonstrably incorrect".
"Meno: And did you still not think [Gorgias] knew [what excellence was]?
"Socrates: I'm rather forgetful, Meno . . . maybe you know what he used to say. If so, remind me . . . . let's leave him out of it; he's not here after all."
From Plato's "Meno".
Here's another fun quote:
GLENDOWER.
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
HOTSPUR.
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?
Thomas is a fairly well known, consistent, and rational individual on HN. As one who has been other side of being corrected (curtailed?) by him, I can say he's the type of individual who, in my experience, just makes sense - particularly if you take a deep breath and step away from. The keyboard for a few minutes. His position here is pretty straightforward "Biden's name was on a document that had no force of law, and then a year later, his name was on a law that did not restrain crypto."
I'm not sure what your argument is, you kind of lost me when you started suggesting Thomas was arguing in a way dangerous to his soul - that kind of hyperbole is usually not helpful - particularly when it's directed to someone as levelheaded, rational and knowledgeable as Thomas.
I'm arguing first that he's wrong about Biden not proposing "law".
Second, and more obsessively, that his insistence on a point so obviously wrong suggests his purpose is rhetorical rather than clarifying. I.e. he cares more about how things appear than helping people see what they really are.
Subsequently I don't seem to be doing much more than throwing food. Maybe I should unplug my computer until I'm in a better mood.
It's an argument over rhetoric, and those suck. Alas it's one reason people get away with rhetoric -- it's hard to tell who's being rhetorical and who's in earnest.
You know "learn to program or be programmed?" Argument is like that, only far more important. Please learn to recognize good arguments from bad, so you can call people like me on my shit. Because otherwise you're reliant on people like me for that, and, well, we'll abuse your trust.
I'm largely saying he's arguing more to confuse than explain. And that he might not actually be aware he's doing so.
I think this sort of thing is important. Most people think this sort of thing is annoying. It's true that arguments like this are usually a waste of time, and this seems no different.
And I don't know anything of your motivations. Have you read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"? If so you'll understand that it is possible, indeed sometimes common, for people to take rhetorical stances without actually understanding the position they are taking, out of a reflexive support for their party / faction / coalition of preference. And that those preferences can shape arguments simply to political purposes without actually considering the substance of the question at hand. Indeed people can find themselves in this position without even really realizing it.
Which is why Orwell thought clear language and proper argument so important that he dedicated his life to demonstrating their necessity. Bad arguments an important signal of the possibility of a person so committed to some political purpose in a manner indifferent to the means of achieving that purpose. You could be a political zombie without ever knowing it.
My comment was _right_. "Sense of the Senate" language can, for a layman's usage, constitute law. Your insistence on a point that is wrong, while at the same time eliding that error to some other argument, signals an interest in winning an apparent point rather than in helping people actually understand. This is rhetoric, and at its worst it is very dangerous thing.
I know nothing of your purposes or motives. You may very well be in a state deserving pity more than anything else. But the way you argue is dangerous -- to your country, your community, and to your soul.