A Triple-Negative Pretzel

Stuart Breckenridge November 26, 2025
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I could not fail to disagree with you less. โ€” Boris Johnson My interpretation of this ridiculous sentence: "fail to disagree"* *equates to "agree", therefore, with some substitution: "I could not agree with you less" suggests you're at the maximum end of the disagreement scale. Regardless, I asked both ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini what the *plain English *meaning of this statement was and got two completely opposing answers: ChatGPT described the sentence as a *triple-negative pretzel, *with the plain English meaning: I completely disagree with you. Claude and Gemini both stated the opposite: I totally agree with you. So what does it mean?

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