I feel like you’re purposefully arguing in bad faith. Are you legitimately trying to convince me that “the same thing” means “not really the same thing”? Regardless of how you meant to ask the question I believe most people, in this thread at least, have a very different sense of what the original quote meant. Your responses throughout the thread feels like trolling.
It’s impossible to do the identical thing twice. Try it. Try to throw a ball absolutely identically twice. That’s not possible. Each time the ball will end up flying slightly different. So obviously “doing the same thing over and over again” cannot mean “doing an identical action over and over again”.
Because that would be equivalent to “the definition of insanity is performing an impossible action”. That’s nonsensical.
Thus “the same thing” must refer to that the overarching action is the same, not that every detail is identical. And that’s what you do when you practice: You e.g. play the same song on the same instrument over and over again. Crappy at first, proficient in the end.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
No, it says “the same thing”, not “the identical action” or even “the same thing exactly the same way”.
If you are practising something, are you not doing the same thing (“practising X”) no matter whether you are good or bad at it?
Do you call it differently, depending on your skill level?
DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz 1 day ago
I feel like you’re purposefully arguing in bad faith. Are you legitimately trying to convince me that “the same thing” means “not really the same thing”? Regardless of how you meant to ask the question I believe most people, in this thread at least, have a very different sense of what the original quote meant. Your responses throughout the thread feels like trolling.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s impossible to do the identical thing twice. Try it. Try to throw a ball absolutely identically twice. That’s not possible. Each time the ball will end up flying slightly different. So obviously “doing the same thing over and over again” cannot mean “doing an identical action over and over again”.
Because that would be equivalent to “the definition of insanity is performing an impossible action”. That’s nonsensical.
Thus “the same thing” must refer to that the overarching action is the same, not that every detail is identical. And that’s what you do when you practice: You e.g. play the same song on the same instrument over and over again. Crappy at first, proficient in the end.
DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz 1 day ago
How do you define the phrase “the same thing”?
0ops@piefed.zip 1 day ago
“practicing” is spelled with a ‘c’
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Oh, another American who hasn’t heard of British English!
0ops@piefed.zip 21 hours ago
TIL, forget it