Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 July 8

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July 8

Individual conjecture

Journalist Nesta Roberts wrote in 1971 about the later so-called 27 Club members: "In what proportion drink, drugs, and desperation respectively contributed to those deaths is a matter for individual conjecture." I'm not sure what exactly she means with "individual conjecture": Is it "We can assume the proportion was different for each of those individuals", or "Everybody may make his own assumptions on this topic."? --KnightMove (talk) 15:58, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Definitely the second option ("Everybody can do their own guessing")... AnonMoos (talk) 16:14, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree that that is what she did write, but is it what she actually meant to write? Why should anyone (including myself) care about what I think caused Jimi Hendrix's death? It seems to make more sense to state that each case must be assessed individually, and I suspect that she just formulated this poorly. Of course there's no way to know for certain. --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:29, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

It's the same thing as leaving it up to the reader, which was already a cliché centuries ago. Jane Austen ended Northanger Abbey with the following rather sarcastic final sentence: "I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny or reward filial disobedience." AnonMoos (talk) 17:33, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

In mathematics, and possibly elsewhere, the phrase is "...left as an exercise for the reader". --Trovatore (talk) 20:33, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I've read Northanger Abbey (twice) and I know a bit of mathematics and I'm still not convinced, although, it should be noted, I did agree about the literal meaning. The context of the sentence might help. --Wrongfilter (talk) 20:42, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

@Wrongfilter: "„Jim Morrison, vocalist of The Doors, who had lived in Paris since the beginning of this year, died here on July 3 in what has become almost the classic fashion of the folk hero of pop culture. Like Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix: and at the same age, 27, he was found dead. In what proportion drink, drugs, and desperation respectively contributed to those deaths is a matter for individual conjecture.“ --KnightMove (talk) 10:12, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Here purely a matter for individual conjecture is given as a definition for the term anybody's guess. In this definition, individual corresponds with anybody's – it refers to those doing the guessing. The subtext is that such guessing is baseless, also expressed in the saying your guess is as good as mine – I can't know, and neither can you. Paraphrasing, she is saying that speculation how much each factor contributed to these deaths is meaningless; we don't know and we can't know.

If one shouldn't engage in speculation about specific cases, guessing group statistics for the 27 Club as a whole is even more pointless, so for that reason it is also unlikely that that is what she meant. As I understand the sentence she takes it for granted, though, that each death should be considered on a case-by-case basis; in some inebriety may have played a major role in the events leading to a person's death, while in other cases it perhaps did not. We just don't know more than what is known.  --Lambiam 22:18, 8 July 2024 (UTC)