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The Hidden Rules of Conversation

Tom Scott · 5.8M views · 2020-05-04 · 5:33

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Overview

Tom Scott explains Gricean maxims, the unwritten guidelines that shape how we understand each other. He uses examples such as why 'asbestos-free cereal' sounds suspicious.

On Hacker News

HN uses it as a short, clear explanation of implied meaning in conversation and the cooperative principle.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2020–2026

Topics

Language & linguisticsPsychology & human behavior
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gricean maximslinguisticsimplicaturecommunicationcooperative principle

What people said

jsight · 2023-09 · Recommendation

This video covers the concept pretty well: [VIDEO] It is pretty normal to try to incorporate the extranneous details into the reply.

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perching_aix · 2026-05 · Reference

I can play this game too: I never actually said they are a bad judge of what comments are botted, just merely suggested it as a possibility. Otherwise: [LINK] [VIDEO] Suffice to say, I'd thus kindly reject being a "bad comprehender of what words mean", thank you very much. It was a perfectly reasonable initial reading of their comment as far as I'm concerned. It's ambiguous. Happens. The fact that "is this AI? this is AI." is a damn near fixture of every thread these days, doesn't help.

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clankyclanker · 2023-03 · Reference

Embracing Grice’s maxims may help here [0]? Being a pit of cynicism isn’t a particularly nuanced take, please do better than that. 0: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Tom Scott, played through YouTube.

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