Timeline for the meaning of "Better off for it" and pronoun "they" from Stephen Hawking's article
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 20, 2019 at 12:26 | history | edited | Harry | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 270 characters in body
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| Dec 14, 2018 at 20:32 | answer | added | Kristina Lopez | timeline score: 6 | |
| Dec 14, 2018 at 20:23 | history | edited | Araucaria - Him | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 9 characters in body
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| Dec 14, 2018 at 19:12 | vote | accept | Harry | ||
| Dec 14, 2018 at 18:07 | answer | added | lbf | timeline score: -3 | |
| Dec 14, 2018 at 16:00 | review | Close votes | |||
| Dec 30, 2018 at 3:05 | |||||
| Dec 14, 2018 at 15:50 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | Syntactically speaking, the referent of they is ambiguous. But semantically, it would be perverse in the extreme to suppose Hawking would have been suggesting that the aliens might be worse off if humanity responded to their signals. And obviously they in the parallel "American colonisation" scenario can only refer to the original inhabitants, since Columbus is a singular noun (and this isn't a suitable context for "singular they"). | |
| Dec 14, 2018 at 15:49 | comment | added | michael.hor257k | I don't think they (the original inhabitants of America) were in a better position as a result (of meeting Columbus). The phrase be better off is in the dictionary. | |
| Dec 14, 2018 at 15:39 | history | edited | Harry | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 148 characters in body
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| Dec 14, 2018 at 15:33 | history | asked | Harry | CC BY-SA 4.0 |