Jon Johanning wrote:
>
> On Tuesday, October 28, 2003, at 05:43 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > Your theory as stated here is that people like X because they like X.
>
> No, it's this: they watch sports because they like to watch sports
> (have fun watching sports).
>
> Of course, this is not a "theory" at all -- it's a way of poking fun at
> people who think it's necessary to have a theory for the phenomenon of
> people watching sports. I suppose I should have explained the joke, to
> avoid all misunderstandings.
O.K. Tautologies often do make good jokes -- but so many people advance tautologies, quite seriously, as explanations (or confuse merely naming with explaining), that such jokes (especially in e-mail) probably need labels.
But I should complain. That's mostly what my long-winded response was -- a mocking of the need for an explanation, with the added implication, however, that if one _does_ try to explain something, it really is necessary to do some preliminary thinking to clarify what it is that needs explanation, and why.
Carrol