 Sperber and Wilson observe that Gricean theory provides no explanation for why Don would say in  (2)  that the weather is lovely if he wanted to express the opposite belief.[59]  Maximal Relevance has the same problem: Don’s simply saying what he means would seem easier to process and thus more efficient. Wilson &amp; Sperber (2004: 621) think saying something in order to mean the opposite would be “patently irrational”. Adler (1987: 710) observed, however, that it need not be irrational given how readily hearers recognize when speakers do so. Moreover, speakers engaging in irony are doing more than meaning the opposite of what they said. As Grice (1978: 53–4) later recognized, they are also pretending to mean and assert what they  said,[60]  and are expressing more than disbelief of what is said. Sperber and Wilson call it a “dissociative attitude—wry, skeptical, bitter, or  mocking”.[61]  Hearers readily recognize and commonly enjoy the performance of this complex speech act. The observation that irony involves expressing a dissociative attitude does not lessen the theoretical problem, however. There is no reason to think, for example, that “The weather is terrible and anyone who thinks it lovely is foolish” has the maximum effects/cost ratio. Processing just what Don actually said (that the weather is lovely) would seem to require even less effort; so that proposition could conceivably have a greater effect/cost ratio. And there is no reason to think an ironic interpretation has a greater effect/cost ratio than a hyperbolic or meiotic interpretation. If expressing a dissociative attitude involves something other than expressing a proposition, as seems plausible (cf. M. S. Green 2018: §5), it would not be a positive cognitive effect as defined, and thus would not affect the relevance ratio. For reasons such as these, Levinson (1989: 463–4) charged that the accounts offered by Relevance theorists are as ex post facto as Gricean accounts.