Re:People work longer and different hours under lockdown
by ryanklee on Sunday August 09, 2020 @01:12PM
(#24101055)
It's not common in English for that distinction to accomplish the work that you're asserting it does. "Should" and "ought" are synonymous. "Ought" has a more formal tone, but outside technical settings in which the distinction might really matter, no one should be drawing any conclusions from the choice.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:People work longer and different hours under lockdown
by xapata on Sunday August 09, 2020 @01:22PM
(#24101137)
> no one should be drawing any conclusions from the choice
But they ought to. ;-)
Re:People work longer and different hours under lockdown
by eindiran on Sunday August 09, 2020 @02:03PM
(#24101523)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/should
1. (auxiliary) Be obliged to; have an obligation to; indicates that the subject of the sentence has some obligation to execute the sentence predicate or that the speaker has some strong advice but has no authority to enforce it.
2. (auxiliary) ought to; speaker's opinion, or advice that an action is correct, beneficial, or desirable.
Re:People work longer and different hours under lockdown
by xapata on Monday August 10, 2020 @06:14PM
(#24114668)
Yes, yes, the language has synonyms. However, the beauty of synonyms is being able to create slight distinctions between them. A native speaker often learns connotations that don't appear in short definitions of some words. Punto e basta.
Re:People work longer and different hours under lockdown
by AndrewUnmuted on Sunday August 09, 2020 @01:17PM
(#24101098)
Perhaps you aren't aware of Hume's "Is-Ought Problem" [0].
Re:People work longer and different hours under lockdown
by JadeNB on Sunday August 09, 2020 @02:45PM
(#24101840)
That seems to be distinguishing, as the name suggests, between 'is' and 'ought', not between 'should' and 'ought'. Indeed, both the article itself, and its quotes from Hume, seem to use 'should' as nearly synonymous with 'ought'.
(Even if I've got it wrong, ryanklee claimed that "[i]t's not common" to make that distinction, and pointing to the technical work of philosophers doesn't undermine the claim about common useage.)
Re:People work longer and different hours under lockdown
by xapata on Monday August 10, 2020 @06:12PM
(#24114642)
Back in high school, Lincoln-Douglas competitive debate taught that "should" was for practical justifications and "ought" was for ethical justifications. Again, to your point, most people don't bother to be so careful with their choices of words.