Talk:The Gripping Hand

Merge Gripping hand into this article?
The intro section refers one to Gripping hand to read essentially a stub about the expression itself. This article is small at best, Gripping hand article is a stub. I'd say that, until this article expands to an ungainly size, the expression should be pulled back here.

Rather than discuss the point here, the disscussion is at talk:Gripping_hand 98.215.48.213 (talk) 22:48, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * There wasn't much enthusiasm for this merge, so it's been closed.
 * But to reply to the point here, there's currently only one sentence in this article that refers to the phrase, and only one over there that refers to the book, so there isn't really much of an overlap. But I agree this one needs adding to. I'll dust off my copy. Moonraker12 (talk) 16:56, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Some use????
I have literally never spoken to anyone who has read the novel who did not end up almost immediately adopting the phrase 'on the gripping hand', and I've met many people who had no idea where it came from. Either I've run into an unusual subset, or 'some use among fans' should be changed to 'widespread use among fans and even non-fans'. Unless someone has an objection, I'll change this to be more in line with the citation. Dstar3k (talk) 02:29, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

The use and meaning of the statement isn't right IMO...
"... But with the added sense that the third-mentioned consideration is the most important one." Not really true, the third one is (as mentioned) a simpler, cruder choice, perhaps KISS-principle-preferred, but isn't always better.

In my opinion, it's more important to note that it points out a distinct psychological difference between the Moties and humans, where we tend to reduce things to a binary decision while the aliens inherently look to add a third path, a tendency to break out of Hobson's Choice. This is difference explored in the novel. 70.37.249.19 (talk) 17:33, 20 March 2021 (UTC)