# How difficult do you find it to comprehend this 'love my manager' OP?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [October 4, 2014, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361 "2014-10-04T06:15:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/61 "2014-10-05T19:21:35Z")
> [@bldysabba](#):
>
> But what is being discussed is not whether or not you will do something, but whether or not that thing is difficult. To some extent of course difficulty is tied to motivation, but I’d argue that as far as it is possible to be objective about difficulty, the passage in question is not difficult to comprehend.
Fine. You keep arguing that, but I’ll argue your opinion is subjective, not objective. Because it is easy for you doesn’t mean it’s easy for all. None of the people I text with or interact with on Facebook writes like that. I mostly interact with family members on FB and they all demonstrate excellent spelling and grammatical skills. So I am unaccustomed to txtspk, random sentence breaks and tl;dr walls-o-txt. None of their posts resembles a rancid pile of foetid dingoes’ kidneys. Like **Mangetout** said, I shouldn’t have to solve a fucking puzzle to try to understand you.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/62 "2014-10-05T19:37:04Z")
> [@bldysabba](#):
>
> But what is being discussed is not whether or not you will do something, but whether or not that thing is difficult.
No. Like I said - it’s both. This particular case is a two-axis problem - difficulty vs ease of interpreting the request and cost vs reward of responding.
> [@](#):
>
> To some extent of course difficulty is tied to motivation, but I’d argue that as far as it is possible to be objective about difficulty, the passage in question is not difficult to comprehend.
That’s incorrect. If we’re being objective, standard English is easier to comprehend than the OP in that thread. Agreed? I mean, that’s what the result of your own poll in this very thread says, isn’t it?
That OP is _more difficult_ than standard English. That might still qualify as ‘not very difficult’, but it’s still _more difficult than it ought to be_.
The more cost there is in fulfilling a request, the less difficulty in understanding the request is tolerable.
The more reward there is, the more difficulty is tolerable.
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### Author:  [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/63 "2014-10-05T19:45:26Z")
> [@cochrane](#):
>
> Fine. You keep arguing that, but I’ll argue your opinion is subjective, not objective. Because it is easy for you doesn’t mean it’s easy for all. None of the people I text with or interact with on Facebook writes like that. I mostly interact with family members on FB and they all demonstrate excellent spelling and grammatical skills. So I am unaccustomed to txtspk, random sentence breaks and tl;dr walls-o-txt. None of their posts resembles a rancid pile of foetid dingoes’ kidneys. Like **Mangetout** said, I shouldn’t have to solve a fucking puzzle to try to understand you.
You’re welcome to live in your world.
> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> No. Like I said - it’s both. This particular case is a two-axis problem - difficulty vs ease of interpreting the request and cost vs reward of responding.
>
> That’s incorrect. If we’re being objective, standard English is easier to comprehend than the OP in that thread. Agreed? I mean, that’s what the result of your own poll in this very thread says, isn’t it?
>
> That OP is _more difficult_ than standard English. That might still qualify as ‘not very difficult’, but it’s still _more difficult than it ought to be_.
>
> The more cost there is in fulfilling a request, the less difficulty in understanding the request is tolerable.
>
> The more reward there is, the more difficulty is tolerable.
No, _You_ continue to insist that ‘this’ is a two axis problem. Whether that OP merits a response or not is, sure, and I have never contested that. What is being discussed in this thread is whether that passage is difficult for a native English speaker to understand or not(or, more accurately, how difficult it is). That is NOT a two axis problem.
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### Author:  [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/64 "2014-10-05T19:48:12Z")
This has nothing to do with whether or not you have to solve a fucking puzzle if you don’t want to, which is what **bldysabba** just said above. It has nothing to do with the reward that awaits you. It’s a question about how hard it is to read, if you read it.
More than half of the people voting in the poll have claimed that the post takes considerable effort or more to read, whether or not they actually are willing to do it. Meanwhile, it does not, in fact, require considerable effort. Everyone is pretending that it does because they want to belittle the OP of the thread, or at least for those people’s sakes I hope they are. If it takes anyone considerable effort to read it, that’s fairly surprising. Anyone who is genuinely applying “extreme” effort to the problem, or who finds it incomprehensible even with extreme effort (which a bunch of people have said describes them) has a problem in their brain.
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### Author:  [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/65 "2014-10-05T19:54:11Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#):
>
> Anyone who is genuinely applying “extreme” effort to the problem, or who finds it incomprehensible even with extreme effort (which a bunch of people have said describes them) has a problem in their brain.
This was, in fact, the exact initial reaction I posted in the thread where that opinion was first expressed.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/66 "2014-10-05T20:21:03Z")
> [@bldysabba](#):
>
> No, _You_ continue to insist that ‘this’ is a two axis problem. Whether that OP merits a response or not is, sure, and I have never contested that. What is being discussed in this thread is whether that passage is difficult for a native English speaker to understand or not(or, more accurately, how difficult it is). That is NOT a two axis problem.
I thought we had reached that conclusion on the previous page and were now discussing the matter in broader and more general terms. My mistake.
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### Author:  [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/67 "2014-10-05T20:36:27Z")
> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> I thought we had reached that conclusion on the previous page and were now discussing the matter in broader and more general terms. My mistake.
No, on the general issue - for the marginal difficulty of the passage to be borne, the marginal return from reading it should be higher - I think we’re in agreement. Perhaps some argument could be made that in general ignoring something because it’s written in a patois which takes slightly more effort to comprehend should not put you off reading it, and perhaps should encourage you to broaden your horizons by going through it, in this case I think I will refrain from trying to apply that principle 🙂
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### Author:  [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/68 "2014-10-05T20:38:42Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#):
>
> This has nothing to do with whether or not you have to solve a fucking puzzle if you don’t want to, which is what **bldysabba** just said above. It has nothing to do with the reward that awaits you. It’s a question about how hard it is to read, if you read it.
>
> More than half of the people voting in the poll have claimed that the post takes considerable effort or more to read, whether or not they actually are willing to do it. Meanwhile, it does not, in fact, require considerable effort. Everyone is pretending that it does because they want to belittle the OP of the thread, or at least for those people’s sakes I hope they are. If it takes anyone considerable effort to read it, that’s fairly surprising. Anyone who is genuinely applying “extreme” effort to the problem, or who finds it incomprehensible even with extreme effort (which a bunch of people have said describes them) has a problem in their brain.
> [@bldysabba](#):
>
> This was, in fact, the exact initial reaction I posted in the thread where that opinion was first expressed.
There is nothing wrong with my goddamn brain. This is an _ad hominem_ attack and I find it highly fucking insulting. Just because I disagree with you doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with me and I made no such insinuations about you. So you can take your insults and stick them in the BBQ Pit because this kind of underhanded shit makes me mad.
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### Author:  [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/69 "2014-10-05T20:46:41Z")
> [@cochrane](#):
>
> There is nothing wrong with my goddamn brain. This is an _ad hominem_ attack and I find it highly fucking insulting. Just because I disagree with you doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with me and I made no such insinuations about you. So you can take your insults and stick them in the BBQ Pit because this kind of underhanded shit makes me mad.
I apologise if you feel I’m insulting you. That is certainly not my intent.
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### Author:  [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/70 "2014-10-05T20:50:42Z")
Whether it’s your intent or not, I hope you will not continue to say it. It’s a dismissive and condescending remark.
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### Author:  [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/71 "2014-10-05T20:52:55Z")
Underhanded shit like “rancid pile of foetid dingoes’ kidneys?” That kind of condescending and dismissive?
I think you misunderstood, anyway. The point isn’t that I think there’s something wrong with your brain. It’s that I think you’re misrepresenting how difficult it is for you to read that passage.
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/72 "2014-10-05T20:54:41Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#):
>
> More than half of the people voting in the poll have claimed that the post takes considerable effort or more to read, whether or not they actually are willing to do it. Meanwhile, it does not, in fact, require considerable effort. Everyone is pretending that it does because they want to belittle the OP of the thread, or at least for those people’s sakes I hope they are. If it takes anyone considerable effort to read it, that’s fairly surprising. Anyone who is genuinely applying “extreme” effort to the problem, or who finds it incomprehensible even with extreme effort (which a bunch of people have said describes them) has a problem in their brain.
So, you’re accusing lots of us of lying.
Maybe the people who reported that it took them considerable effort to read the quoted passage were, in fact, lying, motivated by a desire to belittle its author. That’s one hypothesis. What I consider a more reasonable hypothesis is that you and they have different standards of what “considerable effort” is. Speaking for my own part, I interpreted it in a relative sense, and replied that it took me considerable effort to understand it, meaning _considerable effort **compared to** the effort it takes to read and understand a typical post here on the SDMB_, most of which are relatively well-written in standard English with standard spelling, punctuation, paragraphing, etc. And in that I was being truthful. I admit that there are a lot of other things I might try to read compared with which that would be relatively easy to understand.
Also note the point that **cochrane** alluded to: that some of us have more experience reading that sort of thing than others, and that that may have a significant effect on how much effort we had to expend to read it.
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### Author:  [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Do_Not_Taunt)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/73 "2014-10-05T20:58:00Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#):
>
> More than half of the people voting in the poll have claimed that the post takes considerable effort or more to read, whether or not they actually are willing to do it. Meanwhile, it does not, in fact, require considerable effort.
No, I disagree. However, I suspect this may be because the word ‘considerable’ isn’t rigorously defined, and posters may be interpreting it different.
Suppose we really wanted to test this. We take a sufficiently large population of individuals with the same educational level and language skills of those who have voted in this poll, and divide them randomly into two groups, S1 and S2. S1 reads the other thread’s OP as-is, and S2 reads the other thread’s OP re-written using standard English words, standard spelling, and have whitespace inserted to reflect separation of ideas. Each population is told that they’ll have to answer questions about the material without having it available as reference once the reading is complete, and they will be paid for each correct answer on those questions. We end up with two measurements for each population: the time it took to read and comprehend (T1 and T2) and the percentage of questions correct (Q1 and Q2.)
My gut feel is that T1 will be greater than or equal to T2 \* 2 (ie, it will take the population reading the text as-is twice as long or more) and Q1 will be strictly less than Q2 (they will still comprehend the text less well.) If my gut feel were correct, would you rate that as considerable effort? Or does that term mean something else to you?
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/74 "2014-10-05T21:11:23Z")
> [@bldysabba](#):
>
> No, on the general issue - for the marginal difficulty of the passage to be borne, the marginal return from reading it should be higher - I think we’re in agreement.
I think so - good.
> [@](#):
>
> Perhaps some argument could be made that in general ignoring something because it’s written in a patois which takes slightly more effort to comprehend should not put you off reading it, and perhaps should encourage you to broaden your horizons by going through it…
Sure - those things can sometimes be their own reward - and often require a speculative investment of pain or effort to get there.
> [@](#):
>
> …in this case I think I will refrain from trying to apply that principle 🙂
…Yeah - this one didn’t really promise much from the start
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### Author:  [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/75 "2014-10-05T21:13:33Z")
> [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](#):
>
> My gut feel is that T1 will be greater than or equal to T2 \* 2 (ie, it will take the population reading the text as-is twice as long or more) and Q1 will be strictly less than Q2 (they will still comprehend the text less well.) If my gut feel were correct, would you rate that as considerable effort? Or does that term mean something else to you?
Add a reverse timer and compensate based on (less) time taken as well. My gut feel is that it would take the group with this passage less than 1.5x the amount of time taken by the group with the rewritten, regular passage. Anything more than that I would think of as considerable effort. Anything more than 2x would be extreme effort IMO. And I seriously doubt there would be 6% people who get practically every question about the passage wrong.
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### Author:  [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Do_Not_Taunt)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/76 "2014-10-05T21:22:25Z")
> [@bldysabba](#):
>
> Add a reverse timer and compensate based on (less) time taken as well. My gut feel is that it would take the group with this passage less than 1.5x the amount of time taken by the group with the rewritten, regular passage. Anything more than that I would think of as considerable effort. Anything more than 2x would be extreme effort IMO.
I was actually being conservative with 2x. I think for myself, I’d fly through the rewritten prose, but as-is would take me 3-4x longer to be able to be able to reasonably field questions afterwards. But without actually testing it, it’s just a guess.
> [@](#):
>
> And I seriously doubt there would be 6% people who get practically every question about the passage wrong.
Yeah, me too. I’m not sure what the ‘Virtually Incomprehensible’ people mean, exactly. ‘Virtually’ is a strange modifier there…
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/77 "2014-10-05T21:25:23Z")
> [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](#):
>
> I’m not sure what the ‘Virtually Incomprehensible’ people mean, exactly.
In the context of this thread it means “I don’t approve of English being written like that”.
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### Author:  [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/78 "2014-10-05T21:31:57Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#):
>
> Underhanded shit like “rancid pile of foetid dingoes’ kidneys?” That kind of condescending and dismissive?
>
> I think you misunderstood, anyway. The point isn’t that I think there’s something wrong with your brain. It’s that I think you’re misrepresenting how difficult it is for you to read that passage.
There’s a difference between attacking how someone represents their ideas verbally and attacking their intelligence. I never accused **Inf3rno** of being stupid or feeble-minded, only of failure to be considerate of her audience and writing as if she expected all of us to understand her non-standard English.
And, no. I’m not misrepresenting how difficult I found it to read. If I thought it was easy to read, why the hell would I lie about it?
Also, I resent the theme that seems to be represented here as “I found the OP easy to read, so it can’t be that hard for anyone else, and if they can’t read it they must be fucking stupid in the head.”
Please correct me if that last statement is wrong because that’s what you and **biddysaba** seem to be saying.
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### Author:  [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/79 "2014-10-05T21:36:59Z")
I’d hate to see some of the people in this thread attempt to read _Flowers for Algernon_.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2014, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-difficult-do-you-find-it-to-comprehend-this-love-my-manager-op/700361/80 "2014-10-05T21:41:01Z")
> [@cochrane](#):
>
> Also, I resent the theme that seems to be represented here as “I found the OP easy to read, so it can’t be that hard for anyone else, and if they can’t read it they must be fucking stupid in the head.”
>
> Please correct me if that last statement is wrong because that’s what you and **biddysaba** seem to be saying.
I think the idea is that those who find it “difficult” to read do so not for any technical reasons, but because of a general disapproval of the style.
For instance, I might say it’s “difficult” for me to listen to jazz, not because it’s hard for me to hear the notes, but because I just don’t like it. And so it’s a chore to listen to as opposed to music that I like.
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