You don’t have to resort to accusations of politics or ‘factions’ to make sense of what’s going on. I think there’s honest disagreement, but it’s hard to tell until people answer some basic questions:
Do we have, or want, a community norm against alienating potential members?
Is the seemingly objectionable language in danger of alienating potential members?
Are there good reasons to not avoid this sort of language, that would override (1)?
For (1), I think it’s a resounding “yes”, since part of the reason for the existence of this site is to increase the number of rationalists in the world, so alienating potential members seems antithetical to that goal.
(2) is an empirical question. (Amongst philosophers, that tends to be the end of the discussion—feel free to pursue that)
In the case of (3), I can think of a few. There may be some points which can only be talked about using that sort of language, and I think in that case the importance of discussing things wins (on a case-by-case basis).
Also, it might be the case that it’s unclear what constitutes this sort of language, or how to fix it, so it would be asking too much to expect people to change their wording. I don’t think that is the case.
That sounds accurate. I would be interested to know of any research data that would shed light on (2) - I would be surprised if there were not, but I can’t name any personally.
You don’t have to resort to accusations of politics or ‘factions’ to make sense of what’s going on. I think there’s honest disagreement, but it’s hard to tell until people answer some basic questions:
Do we have, or want, a community norm against alienating potential members?
Is the seemingly objectionable language in danger of alienating potential members?
Are there good reasons to not avoid this sort of language, that would override (1)?
For (1), I think it’s a resounding “yes”, since part of the reason for the existence of this site is to increase the number of rationalists in the world, so alienating potential members seems antithetical to that goal.
(2) is an empirical question. (Amongst philosophers, that tends to be the end of the discussion—feel free to pursue that)
In the case of (3), I can think of a few. There may be some points which can only be talked about using that sort of language, and I think in that case the importance of discussing things wins (on a case-by-case basis).
Also, it might be the case that it’s unclear what constitutes this sort of language, or how to fix it, so it would be asking too much to expect people to change their wording. I don’t think that is the case.
Any thoughts? Did I leave anything out?
That sounds accurate. I would be interested to know of any research data that would shed light on (2) - I would be surprised if there were not, but I can’t name any personally.