Vitalisms and the language of "bullshit"
Quite the most entertaining of academic papers is ' On the reception and detection of pseudo profound bullshit' by Pennycook at al and published in the Journal of Judgement and Decision making. Together with another by Wenzhong & Jingyi, titled A Pragmatic Study on the Functions of Vague Language in Commercial Advertising (itself a translation from Mandarin to English) it helps illustrate the 'natural use' and difficulties of obscure language, and it's spread along with the rapid rise in speed of communication. We can use 'shrinking world', a technically meaningless and imprecise, but metaphorically very useful phrase, to describe the effect of increasing human population on a finite planet for the very reason that it cannot be taken literally. Yes, the planet is cooling and this involves some shrinking of the crust but only over colossal lengths of time. So to then interpret the phrase 'shrinking planet' as anything other than
