In article , Rick DeNatale
writes
On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 01:00:11 -0700, Duncan Young wrote:

At the end of one particularly testy session a couple of years back, a
third party stood up and asked the main "thin-icer" and the main
"thick-icer" how thick they thought the shell actually was; both said
about 20 kilometers.

Which goes to show how important semantics are in a data limited
environment.

Which is why one of my pet peeves is when people try to shut off an
argument by saying something like, "it's just a question of semantics."

If the meaning of what someone is saying isn't important, what is?

Since you ask, it is the significance of the meaning - is it good
science for example? Is it rational? Does it make sense?
--
Eric Crew