Getting caught up in semantics

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I'm thinking this might be HFA related from what I've read. Does anyone get wrapped up in semantics when talking to or listening to someone speak? I find I spend much of my day tangled in the web that is semantics. If something is phrased in a way that can mean several different things, I'll totally go down the rabbit hole in explaining why it should have been phrased differently to indicate the specific intention of the speaker.

This gets really frustrating in class when the professor directs questions to the class, I can think of ten different possible answers, but I have no idea exactly which one he's looking for. Then he'll say the answer he was looking for and I'm like, then he should have asked it this way. Like he'll ask, what is absolute zero? And I'm thinking....okay....it's O Kelvin.... it's where all movement ceases..... it's -273.15 C..... it's technically theoretical..... And then he's like, it's the lowest possible temperature. How do I know which answer of the dozen or so that are also correct he's precisely looking for?

I keep it to myself in class, but I've been known to go off on a harangue in casual conversation because I'm frustrated that I can't determine exactly what the other person is asking or is trying to say. I even got mad at Neil deGrasse Tyson! I was watching a show he did and at the end he was talking about if people aren't into science, that's okay, but he's personally only interested in objective truth (something close to that). And then he followed that up with, because nature's reality is more amazing than human imagination. He said he only desires objective truth and immediately followed it up with a subjective opinion! $%&$&%! !! ! Which one do you want, Neil? WHICH ONE?!?!?!?

*ahem*

And then I realized I was yelling at my television over pure semantics.

I've gotten into that with others in the debate section of WP. Either end up arguing over a word that was used or an analogy that was used.

That happens to me a lot just reading the newspaper. I feel like emailing the person who wrote the story and say if this is what you meant, you should have written it this way. It seems to happen so much tho I've given up and now feel like I'm translating it into what I can understand.

I think too this happens when certain IQs are involved. And I say it is HFA related for sure.

^ I don't mean to get caught up in semantics, but I think what you're really talking about is pragmatics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics

(Pragmatics is usually what aspies have the greatest difficulty with.)

Actually.... you're right. Now that I think about it, I tend to use "semantics" as a sort of catch-all for a disagreement of meaning, whether it's meaning of a word or context. But I see you are correct. And the delivery was top notch *tips hat*

*bows courteously*