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The current witch hunters on words seem to fail to understand that language is designed for communication between humans. It's a communication protocol. Taking

The current witch hunters on words seem to fail to understand that language is designed for communication between humans. It's a communication protocol. Taking offence to a communication protocol, is like saying TCP/IP is offensive because there aren't enough of the number 7 used in the TCP/IP protocol, and it's discriminating against the equality of all numbers. No. It's a protocol optimized for communication, not some sort of emotional playground. To try to alter the communication protocol based on personal emotions degrades its usefulness and diminishes the ability to communicate effectively. So now the TCP/IP packet header needs to be extended 25%, and the driver needs to ensure equal distribution of all numbers during communication, further increasing overhead by another 75%. This is where we are headed with our language, when we allow PC politics to dictate how words should be used.

HolyHaddock 9y ago
> language is designed for communication between humans. Unlike machines, humans do not always just want to exchange factual information about the world, and often use communication for additional purposes - jockeying for status, claiming membership in groups, and yes, playing games. This can even be quite enjoyable for the humans in question, for example, mutual flirtation. In this example, one of the bits of information that can conveyed by being a bit more thoughtful about the use of pronouns is where the human in question might fall on a scale between "I am aware that there is pervasive and systematic discrimination against one class of human, and do not wish to take even small part in it." and "I believe all relevant systematic discrimination is in the past."
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