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"Privilege" is an everyday word with established meanings. If academics want to redefine it to serve their political goals, the burden is on them to make their

by edbob 6y ago

"Privilege" is an everyday word with established meanings. If academics want to redefine it to serve their political goals, the burden is on them to make their case to the people. We don't have to accept that a word means something different than what it's always meant before just because some ivory tower elitists said so. When someone wants to introduce a term to clarify meaning, they generally put two or three words together and create a unique term. When someone with a political agenda wants to create confusion and division, they choose common terms and give them new, contentious meanings. A sibling has a better approach for this particular term: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26247166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26247166

deanCommie 6y ago
> a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group. The Google definition is the same definition that academics use. Exactly the same. The sibling you references is correct - "privilege already had widely used emotional connotations that made it an insult to call someone privileged." but it's not academics that implied that meaning onto it. Also, can we have a discussion about these academic concepts without immediately ascribing "political goals"? We're talking about specific sociological concepts. Can we stick to that instead of ascribing subjective "goals" to people's research or ideas?
- edbob 6y ago
  I'm trying to find a way to give a meaningful reply, but I honestly get stuck on this part about academia's supposed neutrality. I don't believe for a second that sociologists are somehow blissfully unaware of the way their work is used to shape policy, to shape debate, and even to shape the language itself, nor that they are somehow angels who can't have impure motives. In addition, it's common knowledge that petty political in-fighting is the rule in academia. There's no reason at all to think that academics are neutral in any way, but plenty of reasons not to.
  - deanCommie 6y ago
    Does the work of open source maintainers and technologists shape policy, debate, and language itself? By some definition no one is truly neutral. Everyone has some ideas and motives, and goals. The problem is when technologists look at those in the humanities and ascribe THEIR goals as "impure" or "political", and therefore somehow a class worthy of derision and dismissal. Don't you see that?
    - edbob 6y ago
      I think it's a different situation because no one is citing open-source maintainers in their studies, and they have very little influence in policy. I do see your point about everyone having bias, and it's not fair to stereotype one group as being especially biased. I apologize for showing undue bias myself.
      - edbob 6y ago
        Scott Alexander just posted a very interesting article[0] with a section "2. War On Experts" that covers some of the issues that I was so poorly trying to communicate. His take is probably more harsh than I would want to adopt, but he is deliberately addressing Republicans here so maybe his tone is different for that reason. [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-modest-proposal-for-republicans https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-modest-proposal-for-...
coagmano 6y ago
Yeah, my experience is similar to deanCommie's. Annoyingly the definition is correct to the established meaning (in the dictionary), no redefining necessary. But surely just a trial run in the real world would tell you that it doesn't communicate well, given it's common connotation.
claudiawerner 6y ago
>If academics want to redefine it to serve their political goals, the burden is on them to make their case to the people. It's not a redefinition as much as it is overloading the term with new meanings. Much like technical language, in which 'memory' takes on a particular meaning in computing, or 'information' takes on a particular meaning in information theory, or 'scale' takes on a particular meaning in music theory, 'power' takes on a particular meaning in mathematics, 'roux' takes on a particular meaning in speedcubing, and more contentiously, 'justice' takes on a particular meaning in distributive economics, as does 'exploitation'. It is often obvious from context what meaning is implied by an overloaded bit of language. However, if someone were to ask "What do you mean by 'exploitation'? Doesn't that mean x,y,z?" then the user of the term as technical language should be able to reply "No, I mean p,q,r. We call it 'exploitation' in the field because of a,b. You shouldn't confuse it for having properties implied by x,y,z."
- edbob 6y ago
  I basically agree with what you've said, except I do think that some terms are intentionally overloaded for political purposes. As long as the language is within the field, between academics, then overloading can be fine. It's understood that the technical meaning can be completely divorced from the common meaning. The problems come about when people try to force technical definitions into the common vernacular. There are two main problems that arise: (1) As deanCommie's root-level comment exemplifies, contempt for non-academics and a complete lack of respect for ordinary usage. This is divisive and toxic for obvious reasons. (2) It's not uncommon to see people commandeer an extremely weighty term like "racism" to take advantage of the emotional power, but when examined they fall back to a technical definition which has only a small fraction of the power. This allows them to destroy someone's livelihood with accusations of racism, but then it turns out that what they really meant by "racism" was something like that person really likes Chinese food and wants to make a living serving it, which is precisely the opposite of what is ordinarily considered to be racism. It doesn't have to be that in particular which is characterized as racism. It can be many things: Wearing a dress to prom from a culture you admire, declining to support a partisan, openly Marxist corporation, expressing admiration of Jewish accomplishments, or expressing sympathy for the plight of young black men, but we see it all the time. Words are turned into weapons, and this overloading sleight of hand in an important enabler. "Racism" is by far the most destructive overloaded term, and the easiest to find stark examples for, but the same problems exist to a lesser degree in other terms. @coagmano's approach is great, because he wants to talk about real differences and find real solutions, not to play word games. But there are plenty of people who just want to destroy, or to pursue a divide-and-conquer strategy in their pursuit of political power.

by edbob 6y ago

deanCommie 6y ago

> a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group. The Google definition is the same definition that academics use. Exactly the same. The sibling you references is correct - "privilege already had widely used emotional connotations that made it an insult to call someone privileged." but it's not academics that implied that meaning onto it. Also, can we have a discussion about these academic concepts without immediately ascribing "political goals"? We're talking about specific sociological concepts. Can we stick to that instead of ascribing subjective "goals" to people's research or ideas?

edbob 6y ago
I'm trying to find a way to give a meaningful reply, but I honestly get stuck on this part about academia's supposed neutrality. I don't believe for a second that sociologists are somehow blissfully unaware of the way their work is used to shape policy, to shape debate, and even to shape the language itself, nor that they are somehow angels who can't have impure motives. In addition, it's common knowledge that petty political in-fighting is the rule in academia. There's no reason at all to think that academics are neutral in any way, but plenty of reasons not to.
- deanCommie 6y ago
  Does the work of open source maintainers and technologists shape policy, debate, and language itself? By some definition no one is truly neutral. Everyone has some ideas and motives, and goals. The problem is when technologists look at those in the humanities and ascribe THEIR goals as "impure" or "political", and therefore somehow a class worthy of derision and dismissal. Don't you see that?
  - edbob 6y ago
    I think it's a different situation because no one is citing open-source maintainers in their studies, and they have very little influence in policy. I do see your point about everyone having bias, and it's not fair to stereotype one group as being especially biased. I apologize for showing undue bias myself.
    - edbob 6y ago
      Scott Alexander just posted a very interesting article[0] with a section "2. War On Experts" that covers some of the issues that I was so poorly trying to communicate. His take is probably more harsh than I would want to adopt, but he is deliberately addressing Republicans here so maybe his tone is different for that reason. [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-modest-proposal-for-republicans https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-modest-proposal-for-...

coagmano 6y ago

Yeah, my experience is similar to deanCommie's. Annoyingly the definition is correct to the established meaning (in the dictionary), no redefining necessary. But surely just a trial run in the real world would tell you that it doesn't communicate well, given it's common connotation.

claudiawerner 6y ago

>If academics want to redefine it to serve their political goals, the burden is on them to make their case to the people. It's not a redefinition as much as it is overloading the term with new meanings. Much like technical language, in which 'memory' takes on a particular meaning in computing, or 'information' takes on a particular meaning in information theory, or 'scale' takes on a particular meaning in music theory, 'power' takes on a particular meaning in mathematics, 'roux' takes on a particular meaning in speedcubing, and more contentiously, 'justice' takes on a particular meaning in distributive economics, as does 'exploitation'. It is often obvious from context what meaning is implied by an overloaded bit of language. However, if someone were to ask "What do you mean by 'exploitation'? Doesn't that mean x,y,z?" then the user of the term as technical language should be able to reply "No, I mean p,q,r. We call it 'exploitation' in the field because of a,b. You shouldn't confuse it for having properties implied by x,y,z."

edbob 6y ago
I basically agree with what you've said, except I do think that some terms are intentionally overloaded for political purposes. As long as the language is within the field, between academics, then overloading can be fine. It's understood that the technical meaning can be completely divorced from the common meaning. The problems come about when people try to force technical definitions into the common vernacular. There are two main problems that arise: (1) As deanCommie's root-level comment exemplifies, contempt for non-academics and a complete lack of respect for ordinary usage. This is divisive and toxic for obvious reasons. (2) It's not uncommon to see people commandeer an extremely weighty term like "racism" to take advantage of the emotional power, but when examined they fall back to a technical definition which has only a small fraction of the power. This allows them to destroy someone's livelihood with accusations of racism, but then it turns out that what they really meant by "racism" was something like that person really likes Chinese food and wants to make a living serving it, which is precisely the opposite of what is ordinarily considered to be racism. It doesn't have to be that in particular which is characterized as racism. It can be many things: Wearing a dress to prom from a culture you admire, declining to support a partisan, openly Marxist corporation, expressing admiration of Jewish accomplishments, or expressing sympathy for the plight of young black men, but we see it all the time. Words are turned into weapons, and this overloading sleight of hand in an important enabler. "Racism" is by far the most destructive overloaded term, and the easiest to find stark examples for, but the same problems exist to a lesser degree in other terms. @coagmano's approach is great, because he wants to talk about real differences and find real solutions, not to play word games. But there are plenty of people who just want to destroy, or to pursue a divide-and-conquer strategy in their pursuit of political power.