[kempbellt]

The only fair assumption from hearing either of those two statements is that yesterday contained two events. Either "uncle died and dog hit by car" or "shoelace broke and dog got hit by car".

It's a common tendency to link related subjects together. So people infer that sharing a sentence/utterance means the two are directly related.

Causing inferences like, "Oh, did he have a heart attack and run over your dog??".

It is true that some people prey on these inferences and use them to lie/manipulate but it is also very possible that they are just two things that happened on the same day - related only by their traumatic impact. TLDR: Yesterday sucked because these two separate things happened...

To a person who experienced these events, it's completely possible that you don't know people think your uncle ran over your dog. When he actually died in his sleep and your dog was run over by the neighbor.

[GavinMcG]

> it is also very possible that

Yes, speaking strictly grammatically. But that's not how people communicate.

[kempbellt]

It is how many people communicate.

[tptacek]

No. Your argument is a linguistic work-to-rules strike.

[kempbellt]

"How was your weekend?"

"Yesterday my uncle died and my dog got hit by a car"

A lot of people communicate this way.

I get the sense that you're on some vendetta against all of my comments for some reason, but I'm not on a weird strike against anything except poor assumptions.

But, agree to disagree I suppose.

[selimthegrim]

I have taken employment (probably IQ in disguise) tests that specifically look for people making this association (and mark them down for it). I imagine they thought it had some association with logical skills and success in computer programming.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy

[GavinMcG]

The conjunction fallacy has to do with evaluation of likelihood. It's completely unrelated to the conversation so far, which has to do with interpreting whether a conjunction is meaningful in itself.

[DarylZero]

> > It is how many people communicate.

> No. Your argument is a linguistic work-to-rules strike.

It's both.

[hinkley]

No, that’s not absolutely not an assumption you can make. Neurotypical people don’t think that way. Fair has nothing to do with it. If you believe that’s normal, you might want to talk to a professional about whether you’re on the autism spectrum, or if you were raised in an abusive household (ie, by narcissists).

Getting a diagnosis might make the rest of your life easier.