[scotch_drinker]

It is contempt. It implies that there is no valid reason for liking X. You may not look down on them but when someone says "I don't see how anybody...", that is contempt. Not understanding is vastly different from expressing disbelief that anyone would do a particular thing.

[wutbrodo]

> It implies that there is no valid reason for liking X.

This is completely wrong. You're essentially saying here that "I don't understand the valid reason for X" necessarily means "therefore X has no valid reason". I really hope you're just confused here, as opposed to actually believing this line of thought and applying it to things in general. To use my example again, when I say "I don't understand the appeal at all", I'm literally saying that _I_ don't understand it: I assume there's just something I'm missing about pro sports or some as-yet-unknown difference in my preferences that makes me averse to watching it.

[ChuckMcM]

This bites me occasionally,

You're essentially saying here that "I don't understand the valid reason for X" necessarily means "therefore X has no valid reason".

The thing that bites me is that I can say something like this and mean it as you do, and yet the person hearing it insists on interpreting incorrectly. I find this is especially true in conversations with a lot of emotional components.

Any time the listener of an assertion on my part that I'm trying to understand fact X, treats it as my asserting that fact X is false, it raises a flag for me to check the emotional content.

In my experience, to understand the appeal of sports (professional or otherwise) you have to understand people who want other people they care about to succeed. Being a parent helped me understand that. Prior to being a parent I was notoriously confused about what the connection was between sports team's success or failure and the outpouring of raw emotion on a large scale.

[wutbrodo]

There's no misunderstanding on my part about what the relationship is between fans and their teams. Rather, I don't understand what motivates that relationship. (by contrast, it's obviously much clearer why you'd have that relationship to your kids).

My best understanding of it is nothing more than the same blind tribalism that is responsible for so much of what is terrible with the world. As I said though, I prefer to think there's an alternative, more valid explanation that I'm just unaware of.

[scotch_drinker]

"I don't understand the valid reason for X" is vastly different in connotation from the original statement I commented on, "I don't see how anybody can like X". It is not completely wrong. Words have meaning outside the strict definitions. Have you tried to see how anybody can like X? Have you done the work to understand why other people do like X? The latter comment is full of assumptions regarding viewpoints and their validity.

You've changed the original wording that I was commenting on to mean something different. Telling me I'm completely wrong and that you hope I'm confused does nothing to change that.

[wutbrodo]

You're right I did switch the wording there, but in my view it was only to clarify. I didn't consider the fact that you would see a difference in meaning between the two phrasings.

I literally see no difference (beyond the latter being slightly clearer) between "I can't see why X happens" and "I don't understand the valid reason why X happens" (where X in this case is "people being interested in pro sports"). As such, I didn't consider switching it out to change the meaning at all beyond slightly clarifying.

The connotations you refer to are also ones that I don't think the original phrase is laden with. I really don't see how "I don't see why X" connotes a lack of attempt to do so, any more than "I don't understand why X" does.

I'm aware that now we're getting into differences in connotations where there really are "no right answers" (unlike the denotation, we can't just look up a single source of truth). Apparently we've just been exposed to rather different vernacular, at least with respect to these couple of phrases. I guess that makes us "both right", with respect to the "languages" that we each speak.

[lotharbot]

> "It implies that there is no valid reason for liking X."

Taken more charitably, it merely implies that one does not understand the valid reasons for liking X.

There's a difference between saying "there's nothing of value here" and "I don't see why this is of value" -- one is phrased as an objective statement, while the other is a statement of perspective.

Long ago, my wife told me she didn't understand why people liked a particular music genre I listened to. I had her listen to a couple of favorite songs and talked about what I thought was interesting about them, and as a result she developed a mild fondness for the genre which grew over the next several years. She wasn't expressing contempt; she was expressing a lack of understanding which was overcome as a result of experience and education.

[ska]

"Taken more charitably, it merely implies that one does not understand the valid reasons for liking X."

And therein lies the rub. Interpreting others statements charitably and trying to make your own clear and unambiguous can reduce an awful lot of social friction.

[wutbrodo]

This is a really good point. I try to interpret every statement charitably (until the point where it strains credulity). As such I don't tend to think about those who prefer seeing attacks in every comment and thus don't usually think about the "be careful about avoiding ambiguity" part of your comment.

[JoshTriplett]

That does work up to a point, although that can be taken too far as well. When people interpret any expression of disinterest as "you must not understand it well enough or you'd like it", that's painfully wrong in the other direction, too.