Re:Show HN: Not Depressing News
by quietbritishjim on Friday November 02, 2018 @12:32PM
(#18364382)
I don't think that authors you mentioned would have bothered using this as a creative flourish if it was just meant to be interpreted in an extremely literal way. The whole fact that they bothered means that there's some alternative meaning, whether the slightly sarcastic one I understand or something else.
Usually though, the device is used to express a kind of understatement. Compare these statements:
He's not bad looking
He's good looking
Which one would you say is stronger? I think most people would say that the affirmative "He's good looking" is stronger than the first version. Another example:
It's not without flaws
It's flawed
If you say "not without flaws", you're usually saying something like "it's good despite its flaws", so that version understates the case compared to the other one.
Again, though: my point was mostly that the meanings are distinct and that language is not mathematics. You can't just replace two minus signs with a positive one and expect the to get the same thing on the other side. Nor should you follow any simple "rule" like that blindly.