It reminds me of those YouTube comments where someone asks a question like "How many such-and-such?" and then is answered with "Yes." — the original joke was "Would you like X or Y?" where the answer is "Yes." because the question is an OR gate with at least one true input, it's a pretty simple logic-based dad joke. But because your average 11 year old on YouTube apparently doesn't know what logic is and can't figure out the intended punchline, the joke suddenly transforms into "Oh hahah answering 'yes' where it doesn't make sense and that leads to some sort of bizarre situation, that's funny", and through a game of telephone we quickly go from "or" questions to "how many/much" questions where "yes" apparently just means "to the utmost degree, to a degree that cannot be expressed as anything other than 'keep piling on more and more ad nauseam'".
And judging from this xeet, "integer overflow" seems to be going through this same type of game-of-telephone semantic shift, where instead of "to such an extreme degree that it loops back to the lowest degree, or vice versa", that "integer overflow" simply means "to a significantly higher degree than should normally be possible; to such a degree that it breaks something or otherwise causes bizarre and unexpected behavior" — which isn't necessarily baseless, just look at the Pac-Man kill screen glitch, but it still represents a misunderstanding of what an integer overflow actually is.
As an armchair linguist I should just be saying "Wow look at the process of semantic shift occurring before our very eyes, isn't the evolution of human language a beautiful thing to behold?" but God is really testing me with these ones.
Isn't that joke older than formal logic being a common nerd thing? Like replying "yes" to an either-or question feels like an old sitcom bit about someone not paying attention and inferring from the tail end that they were asked if they wanted the second option or they stopped listening after the first, or just dismissing the question by agreeing to either in an annoying way. In fact, isn't inappropriately answering "yes" to various questions in general a pretty old bit? Like misinterpreting a question about something as an offer of it, misinterpreting an offer as a request, etc? It's just one of those "it's funny because it's wrong" sort of wordplay gags, similar to "who's on first?"
Thanks for writing this out, been noticing that shit for years.
As an armchair linguist I should just be saying "Wow look at the process of semantic shift occurring before our very eyes, isn't the evolution of human language a beautiful thing to behold?" but God is really testing me with these ones
It reminds me of those YouTube comments where someone asks a question like "How many such-and-such?" and then is answered with "Yes." — the original joke was "Would you like X or Y?" where the answer is "Yes." because the question is an OR gate with at least one true input, it's a pretty simple logic-based dad joke. But because your average 11 year old on YouTube apparently doesn't know what logic is and can't figure out the intended punchline, the joke suddenly transforms into "Oh hahah answering 'yes' where it doesn't make sense and that leads to some sort of bizarre situation, that's funny", and through a game of telephone we quickly go from "or" questions to "how many/much" questions where "yes" apparently just means "to the utmost degree, to a degree that cannot be expressed as anything other than 'keep piling on more and more ad nauseam'".
And judging from this xeet, "integer overflow" seems to be going through this same type of game-of-telephone semantic shift, where instead of "to such an extreme degree that it loops back to the lowest degree, or vice versa", that "integer overflow" simply means "to a significantly higher degree than should normally be possible; to such a degree that it breaks something or otherwise causes bizarre and unexpected behavior" — which isn't necessarily baseless, just look at the Pac-Man kill screen glitch, but it still represents a misunderstanding of what an integer overflow actually is.
As an armchair linguist I should just be saying "Wow look at the process of semantic shift occurring before our very eyes, isn't the evolution of human language a beautiful thing to behold?" but God is really testing me with these ones.
Isn't that joke older than formal logic being a common nerd thing? Like replying "yes" to an either-or question feels like an old sitcom bit about someone not paying attention and inferring from the tail end that they were asked if they wanted the second option or they stopped listening after the first, or just dismissing the question by agreeing to either in an annoying way. In fact, isn't inappropriately answering "yes" to various questions in general a pretty old bit? Like misinterpreting a question about something as an offer of it, misinterpreting an offer as a request, etc? It's just one of those "it's funny because it's wrong" sort of wordplay gags, similar to "who's on first?"
Well, you aren't wrong...
Thanks for writing this out, been noticing that shit for years.
Happens to the best of us.