@farmerman,
Yeah-- quips of zero meaning mean nothing. Which is no more circular that your arguments.
Not that I hold it against you. You are neither to be given credit nor blamed. The response is a product of genetic endowment and rewarding cultural contingencies during your formatives neither of which you had any control over. The reward, and the long chain of reinforcing rewards, in the easy quip is the escape from aversive contingencies such as the effort involved, and the risks, of trying to contribute anything sensible.
Moving out of range is another escape technique. Like putting people on Ignore or leaving the thread huffing and puffing. There's also emigrating, desertion, apostasy and dropping out. Holidays can be seen as temporary versions where all conversation is necessarily superficial and polite and thus not threatening to self esteem.
And, of course, attacking those who create aversive conditions.
All these modes of response to aversive stimuli are mutually consistent and often congeal in a soggy lump in the bottom of the container in a similar way that the various courses in a restaurant congeal in a dollop of shite in the lower rectal passage awaiting the anal sphincter's pressure reflex to function.
