For example, if I talk about “magic”, most of you will tell me I’m wrong without even asking me what I mean. You might even insult me.
How common is this? How much of this conversation is actual communication vs just a string of triggering phrases that we react to?
How much of Lemmy is people just barking at their own echo?
To what extent is that actually the case? Sure, if I say there is a paucity of obsequious sesquipedalian words on this site, you may or may not understand what I meant, but if I claimed that “sesquipedalian” meant “Marxist”, you could disagree with that even if you didn’t know the word because there are definitions of words that describe how they are actually used
To be clear, I believe that tone and other nonverbal communication can be hard to convey over text (even with our great deal of Hexbear emoji), that dictionaries merely describe and do not prescribe meanings, and that one’s worldview and experience will shape the connotations of words. To give a relevant example, a methodological naturalist will assume there must be a purely natural explanation for every natural phenomenon, whereas someone who is not might ascribe a supernatural explanation for the same phenomenon. Another is the meaning of “magic” which has multiple very different meanings — it’s impossible to have a constructive conversation if, for example, I were talking about illusions and sleight of hand, someone else was talking about a feeling of enchantment, yet another about ritual incantations but in a purely natural sense, and you were talking about supernatural power.