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Do or Do Not · 22 February 2025

Do or do not. There is no…

We have all heard Yoda’s quote from The Empire Strikes Back. “Do or do not. There is no try.” It is a great motivational quote. I tell athletes this all the time. Actually, I tell them that “can’t” is a naughty word and it will cost them 25 pushups. But the notion that we are either going to do something or not do something is certainly a truism. We might try. And we get away with trying. But that does not cut it in reality. We either do or we do not. There really is no in between.

But Yoda’s quote is an interesting from a different perspective too. It is interesting from a logic perspective.

Now I know that logic and reason are not in vogue these days. You cannot tell somebody they are being illogical because feelings rule the day. We feel this or we feel that. So we do this or we do that because our feelings are what matter most. So to even have a notion that logic and reason might play any part in decision-making is ludicrous these days. Or so it seems. Even so, I want to tackle Yoda’s quote from a logical (albeit tongue in cheek) sort of way.

The “do or do not” part of the quote is a wonderful notion. Feeling-wise and logic-wise. After all, we feel that it is true. We can only have it one way or the other. We either do or do not. It feels right. It also makes logical sense. You can only have it one way or the other. Do or not do. The negation of do is do not, which is what Yoda says, and it is the logical way to say it. There are even symbols that show the logic, but I will not get into that here. The point is that a statement or its negation can be true but they cannot both be true. At least not at the same time in the same sense.

Now, I know what you are thinking. Something ought not make sense both emotionally and logically. (Either that or you were thinking about food. Or maybe that is just me.) But Yoda’s statement of doing or not doing makes sense in both ways. We feel it emotionally and we understand it logically. And there are probably other things that are right from both perspectives. Even if it might feel wrong. In fact, I would say that there are definitely many other things that are right both emotionally and logically.

But back to the rest of Yoda’s statement.

I never really thought of the logic of “There is no try.” But I should have. If there really is no try, then Yoda’s statement ought to read, “There is no…” After all, if there is no try, then not only could you not try, you could not say “try.” Try would not exist. Not in essence or principal or linguistically. No means no. Period. So if there is no try, there is no try. You cannot even say try.

I suppose it makes no difference in the long run whether there exists such a thing as try or not. We all try. We do. We may or may not succeed, but we do our best to get there. And maybe that is what Yoda was saying. Try is synonymous with not doing. We say we try when we do not really mean it. We say we try when we are just going through the motions. So perhaps Yoda was not saying that try does not exist, but that he expected Luke’s best effort. Of course, we know this is true. Just like when we say always and never in sentences. We use hyperbole to make a point. There are so few always and never statements that are true that we may as well say that we can never make never statements. Although there are always exceptions. (Neither of which makes sense from a logic perspective.)

Well, I hope that you do not feel you have wasted your time on this post on logic. And I hope you understand the notion that we really ought to do or do not. After all, there is no…

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Typoglycemia · 15 February 2025

Can you raed tihs? Of course you can.

It is interesting that we make up words to describe phenomena that we observe. Typoglycemia is a term that somebody made up to describe the phenomenon that at least some (dare I say most) people can read words even when you scramble the letters. Especially if the first and last letters are in the correct places. (By the way, apparently when you make up a term for a phenomenon, it is called a neologism. Who knew?)

Now, I had heard of the phenomenon before. The phenomenon that people can read words where the middle letters are scrambled. It makes sense. People’s minds are incredible. They can decipher all sorts of crazy things. Sometimes just by looking at them. They recognize patterns without really thinking too hard about them. It is just amazing.

At any rate.

I learned about typoglycemia after I wrote about correctly spelled words looking like they were misspelled. (By the way, “misspelled” is truly spelled with two of the letter s. I used to misspell it as “mispell” until I figured out that it was misspelled. But it does not really matter if I misspell “misspell” because the computer often fixes misspelled words for me. It certainly tries to correct “mispell” everytime I misspell it on purpose. Sheesh.)

I am not sure why whoever made up the term typoclycemia named it typoglycemia. It seems strange. After all, hypoglycemia is a medical condition where a person’s blood sugar levels go too low. And hyperglycemia is a medical condition where a person’s blood sugar levels are too high. So to me, typoglycemia would be a medical condition where a person’s blood sugar levels have been typed incorrectly, whatever that might mean. But I do not make up terms for normal human consumption. I just make them up for myself.

At any rate.

I suppose that I really just wanted to spell “misspell” a bunch of times and comment on the strange word and phenomenon called typoglycemia. Then, I was going to try and write a bunch of sentences with words where the inner letters are scrambled, but that would be way too much work. Especially since I am used to using simple words, often much less than the four letters required to scramble inner letters. Okay. Maybe not often much less than four, but often enough. You get the idea. (See, only one word in the last sentence had four letters.)

Wlel, I hpoe taht you ejoenyd my bolg psot tdoay. And if you conant raed the wdors in tihs lsat praapgarh vrey wlel, you may not be pvriy to the phenomenon claeld typoglycemia.

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Contempt for Spelling Words · 8 February 2025

Have you ever spelled a word correctly, but saw it so many times that you thought it looked misspelled? Nah. Me neither.

I recently wrote about the app and website, DailyPrompt. I sent a preview to the founder of the endeavor and he told me about a mistake that I had made. I had misspelled DailyPrompt in one place. I thanked him and told him I would fix it. Which I did. The interesting thing though is that I used DailyPrompt 17 times in the post. Which is a lot for any single word in one blog post. Unless, of course, that word is something common like “the” or “and” or even “or.” I was amazed that I had used the word that many times.

At any rate.

The interesting thing about the whole endeavor is not the fact that I misspelled the word only one time in those 17 times, but that when I was fixing the error, it started to look wrong. I knew I was spelling “prompt” correctly, but it looked misspelled. I used the computer to look for “Daily” then “DailyProm” then “DailyPrompt” as my final pass. I made sure that I counted the instances of “DailyProm” and “DailyPrompt” so I could make sure they were the same number. Thankfully, they were.

I say thankfully for two reasons.

The first reason is because the computer was more reliable than my eyes at that point. I was seeing “prompt” as a misspelling even though I knew it was correct. Apparently, familiarity does breed contempt. Even contempt for a word. Or maybe contempt is not the correct word. But I was definitely thinking that the word was taunting me or something. So I was definitely not happy with it.

The second reason I say thankfully is because the computer was giving me a red squiggly line underneath my one correction of DailyPrompt. The one that was previously “DailyPromt” but was corrected to “DailyPrompt” was still underlined with that hated red squiggly line. Even after I corrected it. (By the way, I went back to correct the post one more time and the corrected instance was still underlined with that red squiggly line. And it was the only instance of said squiggles.)

Normally, I would blame a certain large tech company that produces operating systems and productivity software and other things, but this was happening on my website software. The place where I post my blog. Which was interesting. I do wonder if I will still see it the next time I open the post. Probably. But that is okay. I can live with it.

Photo courtesy of Ryan Lindsey

I wonder about the phenomenon of seeing a word that is correctly spelled looking like it is misspelled. I thought maybe I would see if misspelled would look that way after a few instances on a page. Turns out that it does not. At least not the number of times in this post. But I am sure it happens with other words. Or maybe not. Maybe it only happens with words that have “mpt” in them. Think about it. There are probably on a few words that have “mpt” in them. I can only think of “prompt” and “tempt.” Okay. Plus words that have those words as their base. Prompter, tempter, tempted. You get the picture. Oh. And “empty.”

(Hmm. Seeing words with “mpt” cannot be the cause of seeing words as misspelled when they are not. After all, those words above do not look wrong. At least not with just a couple instances of them.)

Well, I am sure that somebody somewhere has a name for seeing words correctly spelled as words that are misspelled, but I am not going to look it up. It would not matter if I did anyway, for I would not remember. So for now, I will just call it contempt. (Hey. There is another word with “mpt” in it. Which, by the way, I just noticed as I spelled it.) I guess familiarity does breed contempt. Even with words.