Cargo-cult behavior may be summed up as “using symbolic behaviors when they don’t apply.” A cargo cult performs the symbolic rituals of an airport, when in fact there are no airplanes coming. The meaning of building runways and waving signal flags is to interact with approaching airplanes; in the absence of airplanes, the runways and signal flags are meaningless.
It seems to me that the critique of language use expressed in this post is itself cargo-cult behavior, of a sort. Meaning does not reside in words; it resides in people’s interaction using words; and it hinges on people having distinct concepts to which those words refer. If you are speaking to someone who does not understand a distinction between “accurate” and “precise”, then using those words distinctly yourself — and finding fault with that person for not understanding — is cargo-cult behavior: making a big production out of a symbolic distinction, in the hope of arousing a response which isn’t coming. There’s no airplane there; waving your signal flags is meaningless.
It is much more powerful for people to understand accuracy and precision as distinct concepts than for them to use the “correct” words for them. If they do not, the problem is not that they misuse words, but that they lack the concepts to hang the words on. Attributing the difficulty to “erroneous usage”, rather than lack of concepts, is bootless.
It is much more powerful for people to understand accuracy and precision as distinct concepts than for them to use the “correct” words for them. If they do not, the problem is not that they misuse words, but that they lack the concepts to hang the words on. Attributing the difficulty to “erroneous usage”, rather than lack of concepts, is bootless.
You seem to be implying that using distinct words and having distinct concepts are things that are entirely decoupled from one another, which I find puzzling. Two of the points I was trying to make in my post is that lack of distinction of concepts is a consequence of not distinguishing words, and also that misusing words is a symptom of concept conflation; and that these things are in fact what make word misuse a bad thing.
If you are speaking to someone who does not understand a distinction between “accurate” and “precise”, then using those words distinctly yourself — and finding fault with that person for not understanding — is cargo-cult behavior: making a big production out of a symbolic distinction, in the hope of arousing a response which isn’t coming.
If the concept you want to express is “precise”, and the person you’re addressing doesn’t know the difference between that and “accurate”, you nonetheless do have to pick one or the other of these words. It’s not like you can just use both at once, simultaneously; it seems pointlessly perverse to deliberately use the wrong word; and the only remaining alternative I see is to haphazardly use or or the other as the whim strikes you. I don’t see the advantage in that, and I rather suspect that isn’t what you’d suggest doing either.
Cargo-cult behavior may be summed up as “using symbolic behaviors when they don’t apply.” A cargo cult performs the symbolic rituals of an airport, when in fact there are no airplanes coming. The meaning of building runways and waving signal flags is to interact with approaching airplanes; in the absence of airplanes, the runways and signal flags are meaningless.
It seems to me that the critique of language use expressed in this post is itself cargo-cult behavior, of a sort. Meaning does not reside in words; it resides in people’s interaction using words; and it hinges on people having distinct concepts to which those words refer. If you are speaking to someone who does not understand a distinction between “accurate” and “precise”, then using those words distinctly yourself — and finding fault with that person for not understanding — is cargo-cult behavior: making a big production out of a symbolic distinction, in the hope of arousing a response which isn’t coming. There’s no airplane there; waving your signal flags is meaningless.
It is much more powerful for people to understand accuracy and precision as distinct concepts than for them to use the “correct” words for them. If they do not, the problem is not that they misuse words, but that they lack the concepts to hang the words on. Attributing the difficulty to “erroneous usage”, rather than lack of concepts, is bootless.
You seem to be implying that using distinct words and having distinct concepts are things that are entirely decoupled from one another, which I find puzzling. Two of the points I was trying to make in my post is that lack of distinction of concepts is a consequence of not distinguishing words, and also that misusing words is a symptom of concept conflation; and that these things are in fact what make word misuse a bad thing.
If the concept you want to express is “precise”, and the person you’re addressing doesn’t know the difference between that and “accurate”, you nonetheless do have to pick one or the other of these words. It’s not like you can just use both at once, simultaneously; it seems pointlessly perverse to deliberately use the wrong word; and the only remaining alternative I see is to haphazardly use or or the other as the whim strikes you. I don’t see the advantage in that, and I rather suspect that isn’t what you’d suggest doing either.