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That's a terribly nihilistic outlook on language. We agree to meaning to communicate and progress without endless debate and confusion. SI is pretty clear for

That's a terribly nihilistic outlook on language. We agree to meaning to communicate and progress without endless debate and confusion. SI is pretty clear for a reason.

tombert 8mo ago
> We agree to meaning to communicate and progress without endless debate and confusion. We decidedly do not do that. There's a whole term for new terms that arbitrarily get injected or redefined by new people: "slang". I don't understand a lot of the terms teenagers say now, because there's lots of slang that I don't know because I don't use TikTok and I'm thirty-something without kids so I don't hang out with teenagers. I'm sure it was the same when I was a teenager, and I suspect this has been going on since antiquity. New terms are made up all the time, but there's plenty of times existing words get redefined. An easy one, I say "cool" all the time, but generally I'm not talking about temperature when I say it. If I said "cool" to refer to something that I like in 1920's America, they would say that's not the correct use of the word. SI units are useful, but ultimately colloquialisms exist and will always exist. If I say kilobyte and mean 1024 bytes, and if the person on the other end knows that I mean 1024 bytes, that's fine and I don't think it's "nihilistic".
- schoen 8mo ago
  You could think of the SI as a form of language planning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning (Then you could decide what you think about language planning.)
- nixpulvis 8mo ago
  I didn't say all language is planned and agreed on. But we absolutely do plan and agree on things.
tuyiown 8mo ago
> That's a terribly nihilistic outlook on language. I'm pretty sure any linguist will agree with this definition. All language normalisation is an afterthought.
- nixpulvis 8mo ago
  Incorrect.
  - AlexeyBelov 8mo ago
    Can you elaborate on what's not correct, and what's the correct way to think about it?
- xigoi 8mo ago
  Technical terms need to be more precise about their definition than regular words.

That's a terribly nihilistic outlook on language. We agree to meaning to communicate and progress without endless debate and confusion. SI is pretty clear for a reason.

tombert 8mo ago

> We agree to meaning to communicate and progress without endless debate and confusion. We decidedly do not do that. There's a whole term for new terms that arbitrarily get injected or redefined by new people: "slang". I don't understand a lot of the terms teenagers say now, because there's lots of slang that I don't know because I don't use TikTok and I'm thirty-something without kids so I don't hang out with teenagers. I'm sure it was the same when I was a teenager, and I suspect this has been going on since antiquity. New terms are made up all the time, but there's plenty of times existing words get redefined. An easy one, I say "cool" all the time, but generally I'm not talking about temperature when I say it. If I said "cool" to refer to something that I like in 1920's America, they would say that's not the correct use of the word. SI units are useful, but ultimately colloquialisms exist and will always exist. If I say kilobyte and mean 1024 bytes, and if the person on the other end knows that I mean 1024 bytes, that's fine and I don't think it's "nihilistic".

schoen 8mo ago
You could think of the SI as a form of language planning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning (Then you could decide what you think about language planning.)
nixpulvis 8mo ago
I didn't say all language is planned and agreed on. But we absolutely do plan and agree on things.

tuyiown 8mo ago

> That's a terribly nihilistic outlook on language. I'm pretty sure any linguist will agree with this definition. All language normalisation is an afterthought.

nixpulvis 8mo ago
Incorrect.
- AlexeyBelov 8mo ago
  Can you elaborate on what's not correct, and what's the correct way to think about it?
xigoi 8mo ago
Technical terms need to be more precise about their definition than regular words.