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In an otherwise idle moment some time ago, I for some reason started pondering what we really meant when we said/wrote something was "weird", as it seemed an od
by toss1 19d ago
In an otherwise idle moment some time ago, I for some reason started pondering what we really meant when we said/wrote something was "weird", as it seemed an odd word and not really as defined as it seemed.
The closest solution I came up with was "weird" is used to describe something we really don't quite understand, don't "get", or "doesn't compute".
Since then, I've found it fits quite well in most situations and haven't found any better explanation. Even seems not misaligned with this article. Anyone else have better thoughts?
- Terr_ 19d ago"Evokes curiosity" places it into a nicely subjective place, and covers things which are both disturbly weird and charmingly amusingly weird. However it doesn't quite cover the "weird" that is used dismissively, to suggest something is not worth trying to understand. Approaching it from an (un)explainable or (un)computable perspective gets "weird" when we talk about coincidences where we don't really know what the actual odds are. For example, there relative positions and masses of the Sun, Moon, and Earth are not too weird compared to the weird apparently-pure coincidence that we see both Sun and Moon at almost the same apparent size, leading to an observable phenomenon unique in the solar system.
- 615341652341 19d agoI like your interpretation because it evokes further processing for some situation or whatever is that one is assigning “weird” to. So not uncomputable but may require more compute.
- toss1 19d agoAh, yes, improvements both — the awesomeness of internet strangers! "Evokes Curiosity" and "Does not yet compute" seem much better and more useful.