More evidence. (Recruitment)

by RaichuKFM , Northeastern Ohio, Tuesday, November 14, 2017, 15:25 (2576 days ago) @ Kermit

I'll grant that I say "I'm in the town" much more than I say "I'm inside the town", (although I would probably say either say "I'm in town" or "I'm inside of the town", for what that's worth) but that's because in is a shorter word that means the same thing in this context?

I would say that I am in Kent, right now. But I would not deny that I'm inside of it! And I would say I'm inside the township limits. I am inside the continental United States, right now.

I am inside the town, because I am in the town. Whenever you are in a space, you are inside the boundaries of the space. We just talk more about the space than the boundaries, and in is a shorter word. But if I walked into the space from outside, I would say I'd walked inside the space. Regardless, it's not about which word choice is more popular, it's about whether mine makes sense. And I can't see how it doesn't?

Besides, all the google hits argument answers is that people don't talk about being "inside the [generic location]"; but I don't think that's because inside doesn't work that way, I think that's because that's clunky as all get out? A search for "inside of town" gets fourteen million hits. Even if some of those are "inside of town hall" or some other building reference, I think that's enough of a counterargument?

There are twenty eight million hits for "inside the forest" (and nineteen million for "inside of the forest"), and two hundred ninety nine million for "inside the field". 562 million for "inside of the field"! While "in the field" only has 383 million. That's catching some things like baseball fields, of course, but those are usually open to the sky, and only sometimes have walls around them.

Let me put it this way; if we're in an endless desert, and I draw a circle in the sand, and stand in it, and say "I'm inside this circle", are you really going to tell me that I'm wrong? That I'm outside the circle, or that the circle has no sides? No. Now let's say I don't draw a circle. Let's say I'm just standing there, in the same desert, and another person gets a little too close. I might say "Hey, you're inside of my personal space", despite there being no clear external boundary. Are you going to tell me I'm wrong then? Well, if you do, had I said "Hey, you're in my personal space", would that be wrong? Why not? It's implying there's an in and an out just as much, and since it's some kind of space around me, that must mean there's an inside and an outside of that space!

So now you can circle around to "But Raichu, we're just saying, nobody really talks like that", which is fair. But now we've established that things in spaces must be inside of those spaces, logically, right? So then if there is a context where saying in is clunky- people say "I'm inside" more often than they say "I'm in" when they're not infiltrating something- so since I can say I am in the Shadow Realm, if I want to quickly state that, I could say "I'm inside", with context there to indicate what I'm inside of.

The problem isn't saying "I'm inside an open area", it's trying to let context fill the gap when there just isn't enough context! Context clues could point to that meaning "I'm inside the Shadow Realm", but they could also possibly point to "I'm inside the throne room" or "I'm indoors". So just saying "I'm inside" could mean any of those things, because you could be inside another dimension, or inside a room, or inside as in just inside like indoors, and you would be correct in saying you're inside, but it just doesn't offer enough context to tell which.

Trying to arbitrarily limit where it's appropriate to say you're inside just strikes me as ridiculous, and bound to fail? We're not going to agree on a rule, because that wouldn't make sense; we could agree on a convention, like "Without context, presume inside means inside the throne room", and you can argue all you like which convention is better, but, you won't be able to show that one of them doesn't make sense? If somebody asked if I was inside the shadow realm, would that strike you as talking like an alien?

Because using inside to mean indoors, and also like a preposition, but only that preposition when you are indoors sounds more ridiculous to me.

I asked another person the experiment thing, by the way, this time having the voice come through a radio to try and eliminate a potential spot of bias. And they also said the void?

I feel like maybe I should bow out of this, because I don't know what more I can say? And it doesn't feel pleasant. I'm worried about coming off as an ass, and it's not really that great to have to defend a concept that's just basic to me against forms of criticism that feel unfair? Which is probably my fault for how I put things to begin with, but, bleh.