I think I’ve started to do this already for Disputing Definitions, as has my girlfriend, just from listening to me discussing that article without reading it herself. So that’s a win for rationality right there.
To take an example that comes up in our household surprisingly often, I’ll let the disputed definition be ” steampunk ”. Statements of the form “X isn’t really steampunk!” come up a lot on certain websites, and arguments over what does or doesn’t count as steampunk can be pretty vicious. After reading “Disputing Definitions”, though, I learnt how to classify those arguments as meaningless, and get to the real question, being “Do I want this thing in my subculture / on my website”? I think the process by which I recognise these questions goes something like this:
1) Make the initial statement. “A hairpin made out of a clock hand isn’t steampunk!”
2) Visualise, even briefly, every important element in what I’ve just said. Visualising a hairpin produces an image of a thing stuck through a woman’s hair arrangement. Visualising a clock hand produces a curly, tapered object such as one might see on an antique clock. Visualising “steampunk” produces… no clearly defined mental image.
3) Notice that I am confused. Realise that I’ve just made a statement about something that I can’t properly visualise, something that I don’t think I’ve properly defined in my own brain, so how can I expect anyone else to have a proper definition at all, let alone one that agrees with mine? (Honestly, the fact that I keep writing “steampunk” in quotation marks should have been a clue already.)
4) Correct my mistake. “Hmm, now that I think about it, what I just said didn’t actually mean anything. What’s the point of this discussion again? Are we arguing about whether or not this picture should be on the website, or whether this person should be going to conventions, or what? If so, let’s talk about that specifically. Let’s not pretend that “steampunk” exists as a concrete category boundary in the phase space of fashion accessories, okay?”
Now, this process can fall down at step 2 when I, personally, have a very well-defined mental image of what a word means (such as “sound”, which I will always take to mean “compression waves of the sort that a human or other animal might detect as auditory input, whether or not a listener is actually present”), but which other people might interpret differently. Here, the trick to step 2 is to imagine my listener’s most obvious responses, based on my experience in discussing the topic previously (such as “But there’s nobody to hear it, so by definition there’s no sound!”). If I can imagine somebody saying this, without also being forced to imagine that the speaker is hopelessly misinformed, mentally deficient, or some other kind of irrational mutant, then what I’m saying must have some defect, and I should re-examine my words.
As for a training exercise, step 2 seems to be the one to train. The “rationalist taboo” technique seems pretty effective here. Discuss a topic with the student, and when they use a word that doesn’t seem to mean anything, or means too many things at once, taboo it and get them to restate their point. Encourage the student to visualise everything they say, if only briefly, and explain that anything they can’t visualise properly is suspect.
Alternatively, allow the student to get into a couple of disputes over definitions, let them experience firsthand how frustrating it is, then point them to this blog and show them that there’s a solution. Their frustration will drive them to adopt a method of implementing the solution in their own discourse. Worked for me!
Sexual Weirdtopia:
The government takes a substantial interest in people’s sex lives. People are expected to register their sexual preferences with government agencies. A certain level of sexual education and satisfaction is presumed to be a basic right of humanity, along with health care and enough income to live on. Workers are entitled to five days’ annual leave for seeking new or maintaining old romantic and sexual relationships, and if your lover leaves you because you’re working too hard, you can sue your employer and are likely to win. Private prostitution is illegal, but the government maintains an agency of sex workers, who can be hired for a fee, or allocated free of charge to adults who apply on the basis of “sexual hardship” (defined as having not had sex in the last six months), and form part of “optional field work” for sex education classes at the appropriate level. There are government funded dating and matchmaking agencies. Also, mandatory registration for Creepy Doms and Terrible Exes.
Creepy and more than a little disturbing? Yes. Arguably better than the standard Sexual Utopia in some respects? Yes, if you’d asked me when I was 18 or even 21. What use is a sexually permissive society when you, personally, aren’t getting any?