b. “Help the Deflator”
The Globe article takes exception to the Patriots explanation that Jim McNally referenced himself as the ‘deflator’ because he is a big fellow and wanted to lose weight. The author, Ben Volin, responds “It’s hard to find a rational-thinking person in the country who buys this answer.”
That’s just ignorant. And understandably — the science of thinking isn’t exactly taught in high schools.
Volin is under the impression that his mind isn’t heavily anchored to the context of
deflating footballs, when for months, he’s
only associated the term deflator with this issue. He, like most of us now, probably can’t even think of the word “deflate” without thinking of PSI and footballs. From a cognitive standpoint, that’s predictable.
2.
But not necessarily accurate.
Prima facie the texts reflect incriminating language to those who have been loaded up with the idea that there was a tampering ploy in place. Once the mind has decided what the “deflator” refers to, it has a hard time accepting a counter explanation without a larger sum of evidence. But again, that’s a recipe for false conclusions and simply a predictable function of the brain’s desire to create certainty instead of ambiguity.
Conversely, if I told you that two jocular workmates came up with strange terms to needle each other with, and those terms were related to the actual work they did every day, would you think that’s strange? It’s possible, without any additional evidence (see section 3 and 4 below), that he calls himself the “deflator” because he regularly tampers with footballs on Sunday. There are also a myriad of other possibilities for that one text message, especially given McNally’s texting habits and propensity for wild language and nonsensical statements (e.g. “what’s up dorito dink?”)
People use jargon specific to their vocation all the time, and do so in extending humor or personalizing phrases. On the outside (with no context) these references seem meaningless or are misinterpreted. That’s the definition of an “inside joke.” It takes one instant of connecting a football losing weight
to a person losing weight and voila, an inside joke. (Or, the only recorded instance of McNally referring to his role in a tampering scheme, a scheme that was otherwise never apparently discussed over text.)
