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>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

>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.
- deanCommie 6y ago
  I completely agree with your first 2 paragraphs. People pretend like describing a person or action as racist (in the academic definition) is a non-judgemental callout of our society's continued opportunity for improvement. However they ignore (willfully) the automatic mob that will invariably form to not educate but to chastise the person into oblivion (and taking their livelyhood in process). I do think we need a better way to callout subtle and insidious racism in people's beliefs and actions but make it an educational opportunity for growth for the person and for society, not the instigation of a pile on. Having said that, your specific examples are really strange, and I'd like to dive into why. Please make sure you understand, I do not do this to indict you, or accuse you of anything remotely of racism yourself. But your choices of example are strange because unfortunately I do think they are generally associated with malicious racists who use them as cover to have subtle plausible deniability. > openly Marxist corporation Speaking of words completely devoid of technical meaning. Can you clarify what you mean by openly Marxist corporations or offer an example? Because, I'm going to be honest, 99% of the usage of this term online today is not treated respectfully by neutral parties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th... > expressing admiration of Jewish accomplishments Jewish or Israeli? The context matters significantly. It's naive to not be hypervigilant about both positive and negative discussions of Israelis and Jews online. You have everything on the spectrum: You have fully well-intentioned supporters of Palestianians and Palestine. But you also have duplicitous conmen who use the support of Palestine as a cover for blatant anti-semitism. You have fully well-intentioned supporters of Jews and Israel. And you have duplicitous conmen who use the support of Jews and Israel as a cover for blatant islamophobia, or worse Christian Supremacy. (Evangelical Christians in the US are militantly pro-Israel not because they so love their Jewish bretheren or hate Muslims, but simply because Israel has prophetic meaning in Evangelical Christian expectations of the Apocalypse/Rapture). The problem is that while the majority of people hold neutral/centrist beliefs on Palestine and Israel, the extremists are overrepresented online. Most likely when people react negatively to concepts like "expressing admiration of Jewish accomplishments", they are reacting to those in context > or expressing sympathy for the plight of young black men, Again, this seemingly uncontroversial concept is completely weaponized online. White supremacists (actual ones) will openly proclaim their concern for the plight of young black men. And they'll say that nobody can take care of them better than other black folks. Which is why 1) They should stop killing each other in greater numbers than white police do, and 2) This is why we need segregation so that White society can take care of itself, and Black society can do so also. This follow up isn't always visible and isn't always revealed. It comes later once the person who is operating in bad faith has earned trust and credibility.
edbob 6y ago
As an aside, I surely don't always agree with your comments, but they are always well-reasoned and thought-provoking. Even when I disagree, it is a very respectful disagreement.
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  Thanks, it means a lot to know I'm not just shouting into the void sometimes.
  - mercer 6y ago
    You're in my "show new comments from particular users" Telegram bot, and I find you to be among the better commenters here, so you're definitely not shouting into the void :).
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
> 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." We desperately need more of that. The problem comes when someone reads an academic who means p,q,r, and repeats what they said to non-academics, and then they have a discussion where (almost) everybody thinks the academic meant x,y,z, and therefore everyone concludes that the academic is totally divorced from reality. I don't know what to do about it. We don't want to make academics less accessible to the public, and demand that the public take it on faith that the academics know what they're talking about, and the ordinary public shouldn't worry their limited heads about such things. We also don't want to force the academics to use non-academic language in their academic work. And we can't expect the general public to put in a month or a decade to learn all the nuances of the academic definitions. The only thing I can see that could work is translators - people who can explain (a simplified form of) what the academics are saying, in language that ordinary people use, pointing out along the way that the academics mean p,q,r and not x,y,z. People that can do that well are, I think, rare. It might help to have more of them - but how do we make that happen?
- deanCommie 6y ago
  The problem is that everyone has opinions on social issues and humanities. Everyone can look at a public policy and say "That's a terrible policy" disregarding the work of experts who worked to balance many different constraints in the pursuit of some societal goal. It's the same as how anyone can look at a piece of art and say "That's terrible. My kindergarten son could have drawn that." and think their opinion is as valid as art critics. As opposed to STEM where people generally keep to opinions only in their domains. Now, you could say that this means proves that humanities are less rigorous and less worthy of respect, and that might take you so far. But ultimately the world is full of humans, and dealing with their habits, emotions, and motivations is not the work of biologists or chemists or physicists or mathematicians. The challenge is that when a software engineer encounters a hardware engineer and they try to reach an understanding, there is an implicit baseline of respect, and if some terminology or phrasing doesn't fit one side, they default to assuming the term must mean something different in the other domain, and they ask for clarification. When technologists on HackerNews encounter terms like privilege, justice, or exploitation from those in the humanities, they offer none of the same respect, and react to their own personal unstudied interpretation of the term.

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.

deanCommie 6y ago
I completely agree with your first 2 paragraphs. People pretend like describing a person or action as racist (in the academic definition) is a non-judgemental callout of our society's continued opportunity for improvement. However they ignore (willfully) the automatic mob that will invariably form to not educate but to chastise the person into oblivion (and taking their livelyhood in process). I do think we need a better way to callout subtle and insidious racism in people's beliefs and actions but make it an educational opportunity for growth for the person and for society, not the instigation of a pile on. Having said that, your specific examples are really strange, and I'd like to dive into why. Please make sure you understand, I do not do this to indict you, or accuse you of anything remotely of racism yourself. But your choices of example are strange because unfortunately I do think they are generally associated with malicious racists who use them as cover to have subtle plausible deniability. > openly Marxist corporation Speaking of words completely devoid of technical meaning. Can you clarify what you mean by openly Marxist corporations or offer an example? Because, I'm going to be honest, 99% of the usage of this term online today is not treated respectfully by neutral parties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th... > expressing admiration of Jewish accomplishments Jewish or Israeli? The context matters significantly. It's naive to not be hypervigilant about both positive and negative discussions of Israelis and Jews online. You have everything on the spectrum: You have fully well-intentioned supporters of Palestianians and Palestine. But you also have duplicitous conmen who use the support of Palestine as a cover for blatant anti-semitism. You have fully well-intentioned supporters of Jews and Israel. And you have duplicitous conmen who use the support of Jews and Israel as a cover for blatant islamophobia, or worse Christian Supremacy. (Evangelical Christians in the US are militantly pro-Israel not because they so love their Jewish bretheren or hate Muslims, but simply because Israel has prophetic meaning in Evangelical Christian expectations of the Apocalypse/Rapture). The problem is that while the majority of people hold neutral/centrist beliefs on Palestine and Israel, the extremists are overrepresented online. Most likely when people react negatively to concepts like "expressing admiration of Jewish accomplishments", they are reacting to those in context > or expressing sympathy for the plight of young black men, Again, this seemingly uncontroversial concept is completely weaponized online. White supremacists (actual ones) will openly proclaim their concern for the plight of young black men. And they'll say that nobody can take care of them better than other black folks. Which is why 1) They should stop killing each other in greater numbers than white police do, and 2) This is why we need segregation so that White society can take care of itself, and Black society can do so also. This follow up isn't always visible and isn't always revealed. It comes later once the person who is operating in bad faith has earned trust and credibility.

edbob 6y ago

As an aside, I surely don't always agree with your comments, but they are always well-reasoned and thought-provoking. Even when I disagree, it is a very respectful disagreement.

claudiawerner 6y ago
Thanks, it means a lot to know I'm not just shouting into the void sometimes.
- mercer 6y ago
  You're in my "show new comments from particular users" Telegram bot, and I find you to be among the better commenters here, so you're definitely not shouting into the void :).

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

> 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." We desperately need more of that. The problem comes when someone reads an academic who means p,q,r, and repeats what they said to non-academics, and then they have a discussion where (almost) everybody thinks the academic meant x,y,z, and therefore everyone concludes that the academic is totally divorced from reality. I don't know what to do about it. We don't want to make academics less accessible to the public, and demand that the public take it on faith that the academics know what they're talking about, and the ordinary public shouldn't worry their limited heads about such things. We also don't want to force the academics to use non-academic language in their academic work. And we can't expect the general public to put in a month or a decade to learn all the nuances of the academic definitions. The only thing I can see that could work is translators - people who can explain (a simplified form of) what the academics are saying, in language that ordinary people use, pointing out along the way that the academics mean p,q,r and not x,y,z. People that can do that well are, I think, rare. It might help to have more of them - but how do we make that happen?

deanCommie 6y ago
The problem is that everyone has opinions on social issues and humanities. Everyone can look at a public policy and say "That's a terrible policy" disregarding the work of experts who worked to balance many different constraints in the pursuit of some societal goal. It's the same as how anyone can look at a piece of art and say "That's terrible. My kindergarten son could have drawn that." and think their opinion is as valid as art critics. As opposed to STEM where people generally keep to opinions only in their domains. Now, you could say that this means proves that humanities are less rigorous and less worthy of respect, and that might take you so far. But ultimately the world is full of humans, and dealing with their habits, emotions, and motivations is not the work of biologists or chemists or physicists or mathematicians. The challenge is that when a software engineer encounters a hardware engineer and they try to reach an understanding, there is an implicit baseline of respect, and if some terminology or phrasing doesn't fit one side, they default to assuming the term must mean something different in the other domain, and they ask for clarification. When technologists on HackerNews encounter terms like privilege, justice, or exploitation from those in the humanities, they offer none of the same respect, and react to their own personal unstudied interpretation of the term.