Apologies if I'm misunderstanding your original post - I agree with everything you've just written in your reply to me - but to pick up an example from the orig

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding your original post - I agree with everything you've just written in your reply to me - but to pick up an example from the original: >> I thought building a version of the game might be a good creative outlet. (a) >Meant: "I like building games and making a clone of this would be fun!" (b) >Sounds like: "I did not bother to check google, so I had to build one myself." (c) I don't know how you got from (a) to (c) if not through cynicism. How is that critical thinking? You appear to be painting a worst-case interpretation and adding your own detail to make it sounds worse. Let's try an alternative version of the same construction: "I think building a table might be a good creative outlet" Does that sound more like "I like building things and making my own table would be fun" or "I did not bother to check <local_furniture_store>, so I had to build one myself" To me it's very clearly the former; how can you know whether I did or did not investigate alternatives from that sentence? I could do the same with "None of my 'friends' told me I copied a well known game" - air quotes implies they're not really friends "I am unaware this game already existed in many forms" - that sentence is a contradiction in terms, but if you mean 'I was...' then the original specifically mentions the game by name - therefore obviously his/her version of it which clearly did not previously exist "this game has no name; nobody else in the whole world plays it" - how can anyone with any certainty ever assert that no-one else in the whole world does something? I'm confused, have I totally misread you? What am I missing?