Is My Masterplug RCD Safe? Please Help!

[JohnW2]

It is literally awful ...

That's a little ironic - have you looked up the dictionary definition (at least, the 'original' one) of 'awful' recently?

...but it seems that the folk who decide these things are staunch democrats insofar as when the majority of people are wrong it therefore becomes right. You may consider this process wicked whether you agree with it or not.

All very true - but, as I said to BAS, it's the only way I can think of in which language can evolve. If someone, followed by many others, never uses language in a manner which is technically 'wrong' at the time, there could never be any change/evolution, could there? Many of us "don't like" some of the evolution that has occurred, but I fear it is simply 'how the world works'. Whether we would be better off if we were still using the language of Chaucer (or even his predecessors) is, I guess, a matter of opinion!

Kind Regards, John

 

[EFLImpudence]

It is literally awful ...

That's a little ironic - have you looked up the dictionary definition (at least, the 'original' one) of 'awful' recently?

Not ironic (on my part) - intentional.

The OED has also recently changed the definition of literally so it does not now only mean 'literally' but also 'not literally'.

 

[JohnW2]

It is literally awful ...

That's a little ironic - have you looked up the dictionary definition (at least, the 'original' one) of 'awful' recently?

Not ironic (on my part) - intentional.

I had assumed that it was 'deliberate irony' on your part!

The OED has also recently changed the definition of literally so it does not now only mean 'literally' but also 'not literally'.

Interesting - but, in that case, the non-literal use of the word 'literally' has been in pretty common use for many years - so I suppose that the OED had to eventually acknowledge that.

I think it's probably a mistake to think that the inclusion of new 'common usage' meanings/usage in the OED indicates that they 'approve' of that common usage. However, if a major dictionary is to serve it's purpose, it has no real choice but to include everything which is in common usage, whether they like that usage or not.

Kind Regards, John

 

[ebee]

The word "refute" oft gets used wrongly these days.
Usually by the high profile lot


The term "for free" gets me going.
My old teachers would cringe "for nothing", "for no cost" or "free of charge" but never "for free"

LOL

 

[JohnW2]

John, for the purposes of your little hypothesis, in the population as a whole, what is the probability of developing the disease? ... And what is the probability that the genetics/family history reliably predict the onset of the disease?

It has occurred to me that, by assuming (never assume!) that everyone else understood what was in my mind, I may have been a little unclear.

As I wrote last night, for my analogy to work, the probabilities of the disease and of a lethal (without RCD) electric shock have to be roughly the same. What I didn't originally emphasise (but went into a bit last night) is that those (similar) probabilities are both incredibly small. At seemingly around 1 in 3 million per year, the risk of death by electrocution in the home in the UK is around a fifth of the 'risk' of winning the Lottery if you buy just one ticket per year, and over ten times lower than the 'risk' of winning the Lottery if you buy one ticket every week.

That being the case, if human psychology and attitude to risk were rational, one might expect that most people would go for my option 1 (no drugs, or no RCDs at all) - since, even without those 'protections', the risk was so tiny - nearly 90 times lower than the risk of dying on UK roads (about 1 in 34,000 in 2012).

However, most people's minds (and the regs) don't work like that - such that, despite the incredibly small risk, they see the need for additional protection (drug or RCD) to reduce that tiny risk even further. One might expect that people who thought like that would want that additional protection to be as effective as possible in further reducing the risk - i.e. if they feel that they need to reduce the risk to below the 1 in 13 million, they might be expected to also favour 2 drugs (or RCDs) rather than one. If people were logical/rational, one therefore might expect many to favour option 1 (no drugs or RCDs), with most of the remainder favouring option 3 (2 drugs or RCDs) and very few going for option 2 (one drug/RCD). However, that seems to be essentially the 'opposite' of the way people actually do think!!

Kind Regards, John

 

[ban-all-sheds]

All very true - but, as I said to BAS, it's the only way I can think of in which language can evolve. If someone, followed by many others, never uses language in a manner which is technically 'wrong' at the time, there could never be any change/evolution, could there? Many of us "don't like" some of the evolution that has occurred, but I fear it is simply 'how the world works'. Whether we would be better off if we were still using the language of Chaucer (or even his predecessors) is, I guess, a matter of opinion!

There is a big difference between language evolving, and the meaning of words changing, over hundreds and thousands of years, when for much of that time there were no dictionaries and most people had no formal education, and people misusing a word in relatively modern, recent times for which there was an agreed, established, formal definition.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Interesting - but, in that case, the non-literal use of the word 'literally' has been in pretty common use for many years - so I suppose that the OED had to eventually acknowledge that.

They can acknowledge the existence of its misuse, and describe how it is erroneously used.

I think it's probably a mistake to think that the inclusion of new 'common usage' meanings/usage in the OED indicates that they 'approve' of that common usage. However, if a major dictionary is to serve it's purpose, it has no real choice but to include everything which is in common usage, whether they like that usage or not.

Again - there's a difference between admitting words like "init", and basically allowing people to essentially make their whole publication useless.

Humpty-Dumptyism is diametrically opposed to the purpose of a dictionary.

 

[JohnW2]

There is a big difference between language evolving, and the meaning of words changing, over hundreds and thousands of years, when for much of that time there were no dictionaries and most people had no formal education, and people misusing a word in relatively modern, recent times for which there was an agreed, established, formal definition.

Interesting view. Do you therefore feel that, now we have formal education and dictionaries, the evolution of the language should cease?

Kind Regards, John

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Depends what you mean by "evolution".

If you mean "taking a technical term with a valid, agreed meaning and arbitrarily deciding to use it to mean something different out of ignorance, or through carelessness", then yes.

Who has benefited, and how, by allowing "electrocute" to also mean a non-fatal electric shock? We already had a perfectly good term, "electric shock", but now we are forced to add a qualifier to "electrocute" where one was not needed before.

 

[JohnW2]

Depends what you mean by "evolution". If you mean "taking a technical term with a valid, agreed meaning and arbitrarily deciding to use it to mean something different out of ignorance, or through carelessness", then yes.

Like 'continuity testing', you mean?

Kind Regards, John

 

[ebee]

When someone tells me they have been electrocuted.

I reply that they can`t have been, they are not qualified.

To qualify to having been electrocuted you have got to be dead, therefore unable to speak to me.

LOL

 

[JohnW2]

When someone tells me they have been electrocuted. I reply that they can`t have been, they are not qualified. To qualify to having been electrocuted you have got to be dead, therefore unable to speak to me.

As we've been discussing, that was traditionally true. However, they can now cite the OED as rendering them 'qualified', and able to speak to you, provided that they were 'injured' by the electric shock in question!

Kind Regards, John

 

[ebee]

Yes John I know.
But I do struggle to see how a contraction of the words electrical & execution can mean anything else really.

 

[EFLImpudence]

This is a difficult subject because we all use words which used to mean something else, if not even the opposite of their meaning now, because of this 'evolution'.

I disagree with it being called evolution and think corruption is more accurate.

However, as in the recent changing of the meaning of 'literally', this is wholly because of its misuse by the ignorant and so the OED is acknowledging this misuse without mentioning the reason.

If youngsters use words 'wrongly' between themselves as a code so that others do not know what they are talking about this is bound to cause misunderstanding in the future.
What does 'wicked' now mean?

Edited to remove wrongly used apostrophe placed to see if anyone noticed.

 

[JohnW2]

Yes John I know. But I do struggle to see how a contraction of the words electrical & execution can mean anything else really.

..but, even in this thread, the word has been used (most would say 'correctly') to mean 'something else'. If you go back to the origins (contraction of the roots/words electro and execution), the word should only be used to refer to deliberate (judicial) electrocution, not to accidental death due to electric shock, shouldn't it? So, even the meaning that the current-day purists would seem to regard as 'correct' is actually incorrect if you examine the historical situation.

Kind Regards, John