i smell ordinary language. banned

Don’t wanna start a serious conversation here, *but* it can be problematic to confuse options and outcomes in decision-making, since I’m sure most people don’t really use the “metaphor” with much awareness of it

​@@dvaccaro96 "Failure is not an option" is a catchy way of saying "we can't afford to fail / we should work as if we can't afford failure", which communicates an intention. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Brandom does take the saying as an error, against the technical use of the term "option", without giving sufficient reason for thinking this would be more harmful than the countless other times when terms mean different things in different contexts (including "metaphors", or terms that have important technical uses in logic or philosophy). Instead he insists this is only being used by "idiots", is among the most stupid things to say, and we shouldn't "be that guy". Brandom makes it clear he isn't interested in being prudent or countering risks, he doesn't say that he witnessed a lot of students or readers being confused by the phrase, why this particular semantic drift is actually harmful, etc. He's just annoyed and barely contains his annoyance (since the meme with DOOM music), he ends up saying something awkward and unconvincing, as it stands. If I'm generous, I get the feeling he made a mistake because the phrase is deeply annoying to him for other reasons and he (badly) rationalized the feeling; if I'm not generous, it's a hint that he sometimes forget how language works at the most basic level, which is pretty sad for a specialist of intersubjectivity, language games and communication.

@@ackbooh9032 urm ackshually