Coming soon - Get a detailed view of why an account is flagged as spam!
view details

This post has been de-listed

It is no longer included in search results and normal feeds (front page, hot posts, subreddit posts, etc). It remains visible only via the author's post history.

307
No head injury is too trivial to be ignored
Post Body

I just heard about this type of sentence, called a depth charge. Parsed carefully, this sentence should mean "all head injuries should be ignored, even if they seem trivial enough to treat."

I couldn't believe that at first. But consider these sentences (regardless of whether you agree):

"No dog is too old to be eaten."

"No gun is too dangerous to be sold."

They imply:

"All dogs should be allowed to be eaten." (Regardless of age)*

"Dogs should (or can) be eaten regardless of how old they are."

"All guns should be allowed to be sold." (Regardless of dangerousness)*

"Guns should (or can) be sold regardless of how dangerous they are"

Therefore the top sentence means "All head injuries should be allowed to be ignored!" (Regardless of triviality)

Here's an article about why we may (mis)interpret these sentences this way.

Basically what I think is going on is that a complex sentence that is grammatical will be assumed to have the most logical meaning. But I don't really know. More people have read the article than I have!

*edit: see this comment for why I changed these.

Author
Account Strength
100%
Account Age
15 years
Verified Email
Yes
Verified Flair
No
Total Karma
647,654
Link Karma
110,504
Comment Karma
533,903
Profile updated: 1 week ago
Posts updated: 5 months ago

Subreddit

Post Details

We try to extract some basic information from the post title. This is not always successful or accurate, please use your best judgement and compare these values to the post title and body for confirmation.
Posted
2 years ago