Semantics

Semantics

“You’ll never believe this!” Alex said, excited.

“I don’t believe it,” said Jack

“...ah, what...?” Alex said, thrown off guard.

“I don’t believe it.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say yet.”

“I wanted to save you the trouble of saying it.”

“Huh?”

“Well, if I wasn’t going to believe it anyway, why should you say it at all? And if you were trying to make me believe it, you wouldn’t have told me you already knew I wouldn’t believe it.”

“That’s not how it works,” said Alex.

“What?”

“That’s not how it works. First I have something to tell you that’s really weird. Then because it’s weird I say ‘you’ll never believe it,’ which just sets you up to hear something that’s weird. It’s just a thing to say in that circumstance. I’m not really saying you’ll never believe it, I’m saying this is so weird you will be amazed.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that. I wondered why people said that so often. Why don’t you just say I’m going to tell you something that’s weird?

“I don’t know, I didn’t invent English.”

“Oh, ok. So what is this thing that I will believe that’s so weird?”

“Oh crap!”

“I don’t get it... crap is weird?”

“No, now I can’t remember what I was going to tell you when I said you’ll never believe this...”

“Well, I can believe that.”