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When people hear slavery, they think of harsh, forced physical labor under inhumane conditions. Whether you think of American slavery, African slavery or Roman

When people hear slavery, they think of harsh, forced physical labor under inhumane conditions. Whether you think of American slavery, African slavery or Roman slavery, the common factor is clear. I'm from Germany, I'm decidedly not US-centric, but everyone I know would be appalled if someone described any facet of their western life using that word, because they'd be implicitly reducing the impact said word has when it is used to describe the immense suffering of those people experiencing it in its (sadly still present) worst form.

scrollaway 3y ago
> When people hear slavery (...) When I hear "enslaving", especially in the context of the sentence "Corporations are enslaving us digitally", I don't think "oh my god this guy is trying to say that our plight is exactly like that of roman slavery", no. If you hear that, then I submit that this is for you (or rather, dr_dshiv) to fix. "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says", as the guidelines say. Now you in this conversation quite clearly understood the usage of "enslaving" to be its second definition, yet you choose to still criticize it by reducing it to its first definition. There is no synonym you'd like for "removing one's rights and liberties". If you find one, feel free to suggest it, but my guess is that the people living in slavery now don't really care about this nonsensical argument a couple of well-off dudes are having over language.
- Last5Digits 3y ago
  > When I hear "enslaving"... Where have I ever used the word "exactly", friend? My point was that people intuitively recognize the emotional impact and importance of words like "slavery", and that the commenter was exploiting that well-earned impact to artificially inflate the importance of their comment. > If you hear that... The other side of good communication is expressing yourself in a clear, non-manipulative way instead of playing on people's emotions. > Now you in this conversation... Again there is a difference between understanding the meaning rationally and interpreting the seriousness of a statement intuitively. If I start calling every annoyance I face slavery, then the word will quickly lose most of its meaning and impact, since the dictionary definition is broad enough to apply to an entire range of issues, from tiny to massive. > There is no synonym you'd like... How about just using language that is specific to the issue being discussed? We're talking about a company retaining some personal information, how about we call that a violation of privacy? "Removing one's rights and liberties" as a general statement implies a high bar of seriousness, of significant violations of significant rights. I don't need to call myself a "survivor of human rights abuses" because Google stored some metadata about my shopping habits. I can simply say that my privacy was not being respected. And again, I never made the point that enslaved people may feel offended by a post on Hackernews, I argued that this type of inflationary usage destroys our (as in well-off dudes who have the ability to help people) ability to intuitively judge the seriousness of an issue. It's the same with words like "racism", if we call every guy who sings along to rap music and uses the n-word a racist, then we implicitly support actual racists by compromising the seriousness of the term.

scrollaway 3y ago

> When people hear slavery (...) When I hear "enslaving", especially in the context of the sentence "Corporations are enslaving us digitally", I don't think "oh my god this guy is trying to say that our plight is exactly like that of roman slavery", no. If you hear that, then I submit that this is for you (or rather, dr_dshiv) to fix. "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says", as the guidelines say. Now you in this conversation quite clearly understood the usage of "enslaving" to be its second definition, yet you choose to still criticize it by reducing it to its first definition. There is no synonym you'd like for "removing one's rights and liberties". If you find one, feel free to suggest it, but my guess is that the people living in slavery now don't really care about this nonsensical argument a couple of well-off dudes are having over language.

Last5Digits 3y ago
> When I hear "enslaving"... Where have I ever used the word "exactly", friend? My point was that people intuitively recognize the emotional impact and importance of words like "slavery", and that the commenter was exploiting that well-earned impact to artificially inflate the importance of their comment. > If you hear that... The other side of good communication is expressing yourself in a clear, non-manipulative way instead of playing on people's emotions. > Now you in this conversation... Again there is a difference between understanding the meaning rationally and interpreting the seriousness of a statement intuitively. If I start calling every annoyance I face slavery, then the word will quickly lose most of its meaning and impact, since the dictionary definition is broad enough to apply to an entire range of issues, from tiny to massive. > There is no synonym you'd like... How about just using language that is specific to the issue being discussed? We're talking about a company retaining some personal information, how about we call that a violation of privacy? "Removing one's rights and liberties" as a general statement implies a high bar of seriousness, of significant violations of significant rights. I don't need to call myself a "survivor of human rights abuses" because Google stored some metadata about my shopping habits. I can simply say that my privacy was not being respected. And again, I never made the point that enslaved people may feel offended by a post on Hackernews, I argued that this type of inflationary usage destroys our (as in well-off dudes who have the ability to help people) ability to intuitively judge the seriousness of an issue. It's the same with words like "racism", if we call every guy who sings along to rap music and uses the n-word a racist, then we implicitly support actual racists by compromising the seriousness of the term.