> how can you say that he didn't think it himself?
Because the same sentence has been repeated practically word-for-word ad nauseam all over social media for years. What do you think is plausible - that they repeated something that is damn near omnipresent in the discourse, or that they never saw any of the many, many times it has come up and independently came up with the exact same formulation? They are perfectly able to step in and claim that it was their original thought if they want to.
> What do you think is plausible - that they repeated something that is damn near omnipresent in the discourse, or that they never saw any of the many, many times it has come up and independently came up with the exact same formulation?
Both are fully possible.
We're talking about a simple sentence that sounds a lot like something a primary school teacher or parent of young children would say. "If you won't do/don't/haven't done X, why should I Y?" is very normal moral/ethical phrasing.
I suppose I heard someone say it before I spelled it out in that way, but I am pretty confident I would ultimately have used a sufficiently similar expression, because I have been on the receiving end of the problem.
And that is putting aside the communicative compression of aphorisms. People don't use shared aphorisms to avoid ever doing the thinking themselves; they use them to shorthand more complex arguments for a listener who has already heard them. They are shared macros for agreed concepts. (Using them correctly requires having done the thinking they package up at least once).
I don’t care what’s possible, I asked what was plausible.
Do you think that they came up with it independently? If you aren’t willing to say you believe this, you are just asking me to waste my time arguing with a phantom opinion nobody holds.
“Just do it” is an incredibly common, generic phrase, but if a new shoe manufacturer chose it as their slogan, it isn’t plausible that they came up with it independently of Nike.
> I don’t care what’s possible, I asked what was plausible.
OK then. BOTH ARE PLAUSIBLE. Clear enough?
It's absolutely not up to me to decide whether they came up with it independently.
But then again, it isn't up to you, Jim.
> If you aren’t willing to say you believe this, you are just asking me to waste my time arguing with a phantom opinion nobody holds.
This is the weirdest thing to put in a comment you could simply not have made. If your time is so valuable why are you here commenting on HN?
Again: aphorisms have value regardless of how many times they are used. People can use them without you having the right to demand proof they thought them up for themselves like some prep school debate bully picking on a younger child.
> > If you aren’t willing to say you believe this, you are just asking me to waste my time arguing with a phantom opinion nobody holds.
> This is the weirdest thing to put in a comment you could simply not have made. If your time is so valuable why are you here commenting on HN?
It’s basic intellectual honesty. If nobody believes that they came up with it independently, putting it forward as if it’s a real argument is just a form of trolling. If I don’t believe it, you don’t believe it, and even the person who posted it doesn’t claim it’s original, you’re just baiting me to respond to a position nobody holds.
Do you believe that they actually came up with it independently? If you do actually believe this, then a discussion is not a waste of time. But if you aren’t willing to claim that position, it’s pointless me arguing against it because it’s just you deliberately wasting my time on something you don’t believe.
> aphorisms have value regardless of how many times they are used.
This is a cornerstone of the point I was making. You’re literally supporting the point I was making.
Lordy.