If only he was a good gambler.
https://www.sportsgamblingpodcast.com/2020/04/26/michael-jordans-worst-5-gambling-losses/
The problem Wolfpup is that humans suck at probability but are fantastic at pattern recognition. We’re so great at pattern recognition, that we routinely spot patterns that aren’t really there. Science via the internet provides a word for a subset of this sort of pattern matching - Pareidolia.
Pareidolia (pronounced “par-i-DOH-lee-a”) is a brain phenomenon in which a person sees or hears something significant in a random image or pattern. Pareidolia is what causes peoples to see faces in inanimate objects, such as an image of the Virgin Mary in grilled cheese or the man in the moon.
The word is derived from the Greek words para, meaning something faulty, wrong, instead of, and the noun eidōlon, meaning image, form or shape. Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, which is a more generalized term for seeing patterns in random data.
So before judging someone to be a moron, consider a broader range of evidence - broad both in volume, but also in type. In Trump’s case, we have a lot twitter style posts but also the characterizations of his former White House staff, as well as characterizations of his lack of business knowledge stretching back to the 1980s.
I think there is something useful in evaluating if someone is capable of writing or speaking in a particular register.
My honest opinion is that all linguists are descriptivists and prescriptivists. They describe what is out there, but they also notice what is considered acceptable in different registers. Not acknowledging that there are “rules” that people expect to be followed is not being a good descriptivist. Descriptivists notice what is considered an error. And, by doing so, they are inherently being at least partially prescriptivist. You ultimately can’t learn a language, dialect, or register without learning what is and isn’t considered an error.
I do think Trump, for example, shows an inability to speak at a higher “grade level” as people call it. I don’t think he’s just talking down. I also would say that my mom could never write an essay, and but could text just fine. Did that make either of them stupid? No. Did it mean they lacked a particular skill? Yes.
Sorry if this has already been covered: I didn’t go back and reread as much as I normally would.
To be pedantic, John Donne was good with For Whom the Bell Tolls. 
Touché! In my defense, Hemingway is the one I’ve read.
Ha! I’ve read both.
And to be even more pedantic, Donne didn’t write anything called For Whom the Bell Tolls. He wrote Meditation XVII, which includes the words. Styled as title, with capitals and italics, it is indeed Hemingway. Or Metallica. Or the Bee Gees.
I was going to say, clearly James Hetfield is okay with the usage.
I think it’s won thing to be pedantic about language in a thread about language, but its annoying when its a non sequitur injection into a random thread.* For instance, if someone misuses effect/affect in a thread about a basketball game, no one wants a language pedantic to jump in with a correction and then launch into an impromptu English lesson about the proper use of each word. Everyone reading knows what is meant even if the person gets it wrong. And it embarrasses the person who made the mistake.
For those of you who say things like “language mistakes are like nails on a chalkboard”, think about how you’d feel if people called you out on various mistakes you make in other parts of your life. For instance, if you’re giving a presentation, imagine how you’d feel if someone interrupted to tell you that your inconsistent use of serif and sans serif fonts is incorrect and that you should be doing it a different way. Or that your mix of primary and pastel colors is a sign of someone who lacks design experience. Or that your belt color doesn’t match your shoes. These people might all say the same thing about those mistakes being like nails on a chalkboard, but I doubt if their “constructive” criticism would be welcome. It’s one thing if you’re pointing out a critical mistake that needs to be corrected in order to clarify understanding, but it’s annoying to just be pointing out mistakes for the sake of pointing out mistakes.
(*) tossing out a few bones for those of you language pedantics out they’re 
And yet again I’m reminded why I love the Dope.
He hasn’t always talked like that, though, has he? It’s like he either lost some of his marbles or he’s doing it intentionally.
I think so, I don’t recall him ever wasting his time speaking with more sophistication. Why would he ever have to?
I seem to recall someone posting a video in an earlier thread showing that the Trump of several decades ago was a much more fluent, organized speaker and that his verbal skills have deteriorated markedly.
That could be, I don’t think I ever saw it. It might be useful to see a video like that.
Here’s a clip from 1988:
That doesn’t seem any more sophisticated than today, in fact it’s extremely consistent. He hasn’t changed much except to be a lot more rambling and less coherent, which is understandable with advanced age.
But he still had the same wannabe gangster, fake tough guy kind of lowbrow communication style he has in 2024.
Granted the essential Trump hasn’t changed, but the fluency and organization of his speaking have markedly deteriorated, and I’d suggest his vocabulary and ability to stay on theme have also suffered, to the point where he frequently zig-zags from one sentence fragment to another without maintaining any one thought for very long and with only a limited vocabulary.
Age alone can’t explain that. For example, I’m about the same age, and my speech is at least just as fluent and organized as it was forty years ago, with if anything even a wider vocabulary range.
I honestly don’t think this is any longer the case. He may have been ages ago. Now, it’s simply the beast’s own inertia carrying on the disaster.
Sure. Your college professor who doesn’t know how to use text abbreviations, who doesn’t know what Skibidi Toilet means, who can’t relax and speak in an informal register at the bar, is limiting her options. The range of goals she can accomplish will be much more limited compared to someone who does have versatile language skills. If we’re focusing not on the speech’s competence but on the speaker’s versatility, of course being able to code-switch is important.
But not everyone needs to be versatile. Sometimes a single tool can be devastatingly effective. Trump may only have a sledgehammer, but he doesn’t seem to want anything else. The college professor may have no desire to talk Skibidi to nine-year-olds or throw around football terminology with twenty-somethings at the local sports bar. Henry James didn’t write picture books, and I don’t think he suffered for it.
Thank you for the compliment; and of course I recognize that you’re also very proficient with the language. But our disagreement isn’t merely stylistic: I fundamentally disagree with the way you assign value to language. The way you talk about “morons” and “sloppy language” and “bad grammar” makes my skin crawl: it rests on superstitious judgments which are themselves based on spurious beliefs about how language works.
Absolutely! In that podcast I linked to earlier, they talked about how kids who use lots of texting abbreviations are actually more adept at writing formal papers than those that don’t. Folks who code-switch are developing an awareness of their audience in a way that serves them very well in achieving their linguistic goals.
But if you judge their texts by the rules of essays–or if you judge Trump’s speeches by Aristotelian principles of rhetoric–you’re using the wrong metric, just as though you judge Steph Curry’s basketball game by the rules of golf.
A: Knock, knock
B: Who’s there?
A: To
B: To who?
B: No, to whom