You didn’t help me, you wasted my time. Pro-tip: be quiet.

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Uhh… this analysis makes no sense at all. And now OP has admitted that the joke doesn’t make sense and doesn’t work. Still, just for edification:

Pavlov’s reaction: If something unexpected happens (like bumping into someone), the event might “trigger” a conditioned response — such as Pavlov salivating because he’s used to the bell.

There was no conditioned response.

The wordplay is clever because “paradox” not only describes Schrödinger’s cat but also the confusing situation of this fictional encounter.

There was no confusion.

That’s my interpretation of what they were going for.

I’m asking what the joke is. That’s the focus here. Because it’s presented as a joke. Even though it appears not to be. If you get it, please explain it.

Obviously. But what about them?

Eh?

Being mysterious doesn’t help me I’m afraid. Still don’t get it. The punchline doesn’t make sense and doesn’t ring a bell.

The fact that you haven’t just explained the joke makes me think you can’t because it doesn’t work as a joke. Right?

What’s the idea?

Don’t get it. Suspect it doesn’t actually make sense.

the lemmy.world “illegal picture scanner” … would reject my upload if it had any words relating to kids, apparently, up to and including “parenthood”

ROFL

Again, we’re talking about different linguistic issues, which I’ll demonstrate below. I see now that my example wasn’t a good example because it conflates a consequence of the problem with the problem itself.

The ambiguity

There are two different ambiguities. You’re talking about ambiguity over the subject whereas I’m talking about ambiguity over the sense of the pronoun.

“I was with Dan (they/them) the other day. They hadn’t brought a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it.”

No ambiguity over sense of “they”. No ambiguity over subject.

“I was with the newlyweds the other day. They hadn’t brought a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it.”

No ambiguity over sense of “they”. No ambiguity over subject.

“I was with Dan (he/him) and Steve (he/him) the other day. He hadn’t brought a poster he needed and went back to the car to get it.”

No ambiguity over sense of “he”. Ambiguity over subject.

“I was with Dan (they/them) and Steve the other day. They hadn’t brought a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it.”

Ambiguity over sense of “they”. Ambiguity over subject.

The ambiguity over the sense of the pronoun is the confusion. That’s the problem. The ambiguity over the subject is a problem but not the problem I meant.

Well it kinda is.

I disagree.

Pronouns are like names

Pronouns are not names.

allowed

That’s the second time you’ve used the word “allow”. That’s very telling.

Dan (or Steve, or both) is the subject of this sentence, not the object.

You may be right about that (I’m not sure) but it doesn’t effect the argument.

In both sentences, the pronoun used has two possible meanings in that context.

What are the two meanings (senses) of the word “he” in your sentence? It only seems to have one meaning from what I can tell.

As I understand it, in both sentences there are two subjects (using your terminology) but in my sentence, the pronoun has more than one sense whereas in your sentence the pronoun has only one sense. The multiple senses of the pronoun in my sentence is the cause of the problem, not the multiple subjects.

In my sentence it’s also possible that there is the same ambiguity of subjects as in yours but that is not a given because it depends on which of the senses of the pronoun is intended. And that isn’t clear. Which is the problem.

LOL people talk like this. I think perhaps you meant to say that nobody you know talks like this.

you would also have the problem when saying …

You would have a problem but it would not be the same problem as in my example. The problem here is not because of the choice of pronoun.

There’s no way to know whether the “he” is Dan or Steve.

Your example sentence is always ambiguous because there is only one sense of the word “he” but two possible objects. My example sentence is always ambiguous because there are two senses of the word “they”. The two situations are completely different linguistic issues.

Your example is of a poor speaker. My example is of a poor pronoun choice.

The they/them pronoun isn’t the problem in your example, the structure of the sentence is.

I disagree entirely.

You’re not going to bother to point out the fault in my logic?

maybe i have never been in proper situations

Indeed. More information on proper communication for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization

You’re going out of your way to create a problem that doesn’t exist.

The problem does exist, that’s why you’re making suggestions about how to work around the problem. I’ve been confused before by people using “they” as a pronoun in exactly this sense. I’m not going out of my way to create a problem, it’s a problem that I’ve experienced IRL. Please don’t try to invalidate my experience.

If you just don’t respect people’s identity then admit you’re bigoted instead of hiding behind faulty logic.

You’re jump to conclusions.