For example, if you said that someone had been fooled by something, would they take offense and think you’re calling them a fool or foolish?

What if you say someone’s been “played for a fool”?

  • @[email protected]
    10•9 months ago

    at some point you have to trust something

    I trust the floor of my bedroom to be there when I get up in the dark.

    I trust my wife not to change the locks on the house when I’m out or not to murder me in my sleep

    I trust my friends not to falsely accuse me of horrible crimes to the police

    I trust the starbucks drive through is real and not a fake starbucks pretending to be starbucks

    any one of these things could “fool” me at any time, doesn’t mean I’m stupid.

    however, what I never trust is that there is a secret to get ahead quickly. Whatever it is, it’s always slow, expensive, with a lot of paperwork, requires practice and expertise, and will go wrong several times.

    so if someone gave a hundred grand to someone who wasn’t a known financial institution expecting a massive return on their investment with no paperwork, I would say they were foolish. If they were a close friend / relative, I’d commiserate and use kinder language to their face, something along the lines of they’ve got to take better care of themselves and their finances.- because I am a kind person. Some people believe in tough love. I believe such a concept is to be used very sparingly.

    • @[email protected]
      1•9 months ago

      I trust the floor of my bedroom to be there when I get up in the dark.

      Technically, you have an infinitesimally tiny but non-zero probability of experiencing a quantum tunnelling event at the macro scale that will have you drop through that floor without damaging it to land in the room below.