6 ms·

Yes, but calling her a librarian is like calling Dennis Ritchie a programmer. It’s 100% true but doesn’t really tell the full story.

derefr 8y ago
Is there a name for this phenomenon, where a category is defined so much by "weakened" examples of it (e.g. your average 1/10th programmer, or your average mostly-just-a-library-clerk librarian) that, upon seeing a central example of the category with all the features the category is denotationally supposed to have, it actually seems non-central (i.e. "not really a librarian" or "not really a programmer")?
- paulie_a 8y ago
  Yes, it's called misrepresentation.
  - coderdude 8y ago
    It's a mixture of misrepresentation and denigration.
- elgenie 8y ago
  LessWrong calls it the "non-central fallacy". [1] "Martin Luther King Jr was a criminal! Taxation is theft! Capital punishment is murder! Abortion is murder!", etc are examples of that sort of misrepresentation. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncentral-fallacy-the-worst-argument-in-the-world https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen...
  - derefr 8y ago
    I think you’re confused. We’re talking more about the kind of thing where there’s a distinction between a “programmer” and a “programmer’s programmer”, where being too much of a programmer (i.e. a “programmer’s programmer”) makes you less like a “programmer.” The noncentral fallacy is somewhat opposite to that—MLK is certainly not a “criminal’s criminal”—the reason people don’t identify him as a criminal certainly isn’t because he’s too much of a criminal.
    - elgenie 8y ago
      It's much the same. Both are exceptional and atypical (non-central) in many attributes but fit the definition. "MLK is just a criminal!" and "Jeffrey Dahmer is just a criminal!" are both non-central attempts to use extreme outliers.
      - tremon 8y ago
        No, it's not the same. The MLK equivalent of what's being discussed is introducing him as "Martin Luther King, a minister from Georgia...". It's using a very plain language to introduce someone quite exceptional.
        tynpeddler 8y ago
        The formal definition clears things up a little: >"X is in a category whose archetypal member gives us a certain emotional reaction. Therefore, we should apply that emotional reaction to X, even though it is not a central category member." The difference between calling MLK a minister and calling him a criminal is that being a minister isn't as negative. Nonetheless, calling him only a minister does evoke an emotional reaction that doesn't quite capture the power of MLK's role in society. Introducing him as a minister is an example of the non-central fallacy, but it's played for ironic effect.
- getoj 8y ago
  I don't think the parent's point is that she's "not really a librarian" but that she's not just a librarian. In the sense that Usain Bolt isn't just a runner. An extremely prominent person in any field is (perhaps counter-intuitively) never going to represent the majority of that field. In that sense I suppose this phenomenon is called "understatement."
  - derefr 8y ago
    My point was more that, in this case, she is “just a librarian”, because this type of thing is what being a librarian is supposed to mean—it’s just that most people suck at being librarians, kind of cargo-cutting the actions librarians have traditionally taken rather than looking around and trying to embrace the spirit of the goals librarians try to accomplish with the highest ROI possible for a modern context. When “librarian” was invented as a term, it referred to people like this. The same is true of Dennis Ritchie: he’s just a programmer—because the word “programmer” was originally invented to describe people like Ritchie. But by that same historical standard, most modern “programmers” aren’t; they’re just code-monkeys. The Usain Bolt example is different—Bolt really is an exceptional runner, rather than being a denotationally-central example of what it means to be a runner. When the word “runner” was invented, it referred to the lesser thing, with plenty of central examples; and by that yard-stick, Bolt is more like a “super-runner” or some such. (Similar to how the word “food” developed to refer to a category where the central examples were nutritionally merely-adequate, so now we’ve had to invent the word “superfood” for foods that are, like, really dang good at being food.)
    - ggg9990 8y ago
      The word programmer was not invented to describe people who invented an operating system and then invented the canonical programming language for operating systems.
    - upvotinglurker 8y ago
      > My point was more that, in this case, she is “just a librarian”, because this type of thing is what being a librarian is supposed to mean—it’s just that most people suck at being librarians, In my experience (working in an academic library and interacting a lot with employees of other academic libraries), most actual present-day academic librarians do not suck at being a librarian. They're not as high-profile as Jessamyn West, but neither are they "computer literate old ladies" -- they use computers constantly in their daily work and are at least aware of issues with digital privacy, copyright law overreaches, etc. I suspect anyone who thinks "computer literate old lady" is still the normative example of a librarian, hasn't interacted with many librarians lately (or perhaps has limited experience e.g. in a small town library).
- rhizome 8y ago
  Try "dysphemism," while not exact, kind of gets at the preconception angle.
archgoon 8y ago
It is generally respectful to call people what they want to be called.
- ggg9990 8y ago
  Good point. Perhaps the best would be "Prominent librarian wins surprise judgment..."
  - coderdude 8y ago
    But you're only adding prominent to it because you perceive librarian on its own to be a dis. You betray your own bias (or more likely, recognize the framework of bias and are trying to bypass it) The real and true answer of course is to not gaf about a headline
bonestamp2 8y ago
I guess it's a matter of what she is a librarian of. Maybe she doesn't spend a lot of time in the library, but she is a cultural librarian 100% of the time.
gruturo 8y ago
or calling sir Tim Berners-Lee a web developer. Oh wait, that actually happened: https://twitter.com/MSalt69/status/476684833221926912 https://twitter.com/MSalt69/status/476684833221926912

derefr 8y ago

Is there a name for this phenomenon, where a category is defined so much by "weakened" examples of it (e.g. your average 1/10th programmer, or your average mostly-just-a-library-clerk librarian) that, upon seeing a central example of the category with all the features the category is denotationally supposed to have, it actually seems non-central (i.e. "not really a librarian" or "not really a programmer")?

paulie_a 8y ago
Yes, it's called misrepresentation.
- coderdude 8y ago
  It's a mixture of misrepresentation and denigration.
elgenie 8y ago
LessWrong calls it the "non-central fallacy". [1] "Martin Luther King Jr was a criminal! Taxation is theft! Capital punishment is murder! Abortion is murder!", etc are examples of that sort of misrepresentation. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncentral-fallacy-the-worst-argument-in-the-world https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen...
- derefr 8y ago
  I think you’re confused. We’re talking more about the kind of thing where there’s a distinction between a “programmer” and a “programmer’s programmer”, where being too much of a programmer (i.e. a “programmer’s programmer”) makes you less like a “programmer.” The noncentral fallacy is somewhat opposite to that—MLK is certainly not a “criminal’s criminal”—the reason people don’t identify him as a criminal certainly isn’t because he’s too much of a criminal.
  - elgenie 8y ago
    It's much the same. Both are exceptional and atypical (non-central) in many attributes but fit the definition. "MLK is just a criminal!" and "Jeffrey Dahmer is just a criminal!" are both non-central attempts to use extreme outliers.
    - tremon 8y ago
      No, it's not the same. The MLK equivalent of what's being discussed is introducing him as "Martin Luther King, a minister from Georgia...". It's using a very plain language to introduce someone quite exceptional.
      - tynpeddler 8y ago
        The formal definition clears things up a little: >"X is in a category whose archetypal member gives us a certain emotional reaction. Therefore, we should apply that emotional reaction to X, even though it is not a central category member." The difference between calling MLK a minister and calling him a criminal is that being a minister isn't as negative. Nonetheless, calling him only a minister does evoke an emotional reaction that doesn't quite capture the power of MLK's role in society. Introducing him as a minister is an example of the non-central fallacy, but it's played for ironic effect.
getoj 8y ago
I don't think the parent's point is that she's "not really a librarian" but that she's not just a librarian. In the sense that Usain Bolt isn't just a runner. An extremely prominent person in any field is (perhaps counter-intuitively) never going to represent the majority of that field. In that sense I suppose this phenomenon is called "understatement."
- derefr 8y ago
  My point was more that, in this case, she is “just a librarian”, because this type of thing is what being a librarian is supposed to mean—it’s just that most people suck at being librarians, kind of cargo-cutting the actions librarians have traditionally taken rather than looking around and trying to embrace the spirit of the goals librarians try to accomplish with the highest ROI possible for a modern context. When “librarian” was invented as a term, it referred to people like this. The same is true of Dennis Ritchie: he’s just a programmer—because the word “programmer” was originally invented to describe people like Ritchie. But by that same historical standard, most modern “programmers” aren’t; they’re just code-monkeys. The Usain Bolt example is different—Bolt really is an exceptional runner, rather than being a denotationally-central example of what it means to be a runner. When the word “runner” was invented, it referred to the lesser thing, with plenty of central examples; and by that yard-stick, Bolt is more like a “super-runner” or some such. (Similar to how the word “food” developed to refer to a category where the central examples were nutritionally merely-adequate, so now we’ve had to invent the word “superfood” for foods that are, like, really dang good at being food.)
  - ggg9990 8y ago
    The word programmer was not invented to describe people who invented an operating system and then invented the canonical programming language for operating systems.
  - upvotinglurker 8y ago
    > My point was more that, in this case, she is “just a librarian”, because this type of thing is what being a librarian is supposed to mean—it’s just that most people suck at being librarians, In my experience (working in an academic library and interacting a lot with employees of other academic libraries), most actual present-day academic librarians do not suck at being a librarian. They're not as high-profile as Jessamyn West, but neither are they "computer literate old ladies" -- they use computers constantly in their daily work and are at least aware of issues with digital privacy, copyright law overreaches, etc. I suspect anyone who thinks "computer literate old lady" is still the normative example of a librarian, hasn't interacted with many librarians lately (or perhaps has limited experience e.g. in a small town library).
rhizome 8y ago
Try "dysphemism," while not exact, kind of gets at the preconception angle.

archgoon 8y ago

It is generally respectful to call people what they want to be called.

ggg9990 8y ago
Good point. Perhaps the best would be "Prominent librarian wins surprise judgment..."
- coderdude 8y ago
  But you're only adding prominent to it because you perceive librarian on its own to be a dis. You betray your own bias (or more likely, recognize the framework of bias and are trying to bypass it) The real and true answer of course is to not gaf about a headline

bonestamp2 8y ago

I guess it's a matter of what she is a librarian of. Maybe she doesn't spend a lot of time in the library, but she is a cultural librarian 100% of the time.

gruturo 8y ago

or calling sir Tim Berners-Lee a web developer. Oh wait, that actually happened: https://twitter.com/MSalt69/status/476684833221926912 https://twitter.com/MSalt69/status/476684833221926912