Saturday, January 29, 2011

A Modest Proposal

Dear people of the universe,

Replace "random" with "arbitrary" in your speech.

Thank you,
People Who Know What They're Talking About

2 comments:

  1. It's true that "arbitrary" would fit nicely in quite a lot of scenarios instead of "random" but I disagree to an extent. "Arbitrary" is a term that essentially means that the matter in question is beholden to neither party. While the "randominity" of chance can be viewed as exceeding the bounds of either sides of the discussion (thereby in arbitration) it is not to be said that the current connotation of the term "random" is used explicitly when both sides are without control over the subject defined as "random". For example, a personal opinion may be expressed as random to another individual who sees it as anything but random. The dividing factor is simply that the "random" of the world is often a matter of ignorance.

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  2. Holy crap, an actual comment ... one not prompted by my friends (presumably). This feels weird. Hang on.

    Ahem.

    Anyway, I was basically referencing the really annoying of habit to people do something like, I don't know, flipping their hair and making a funny face, and saying "I'm so random!"

    There are instances where random is perfectly acceptable, I just usually prefer them to involve numbers.

    In fairness, I might've just accomplished the same thing by saying "If you're going to use the word 'random', don't.", but that would probably come off as more than a little snarky ... which the post was anyway, thinking back on it.

    Oh, well. You've got a good point! Thanks for reading!

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