[pdabbadabba]

Well, I wasn't outraged before, but I have to admit that I may be feeling a touch of outrage now.

The "mangling" of speech to be politically correct and the "muffling" of open and honest communications that some of us are asking for is just this: changing "score something 'out of your league'" to, e.g., "meet someone 'out of your league.'" I'm not sure why people see this as so hard to swallow.

There may be someone "trolling for a response by feigning outrage" in this conversation, but I don't think it's GP.

[lighttower]

> changing "score something 'out of your league'" to, e.g., "meet someone 'out of your league.'" I'm not sure why people see this as so hard to swallow.

The use case for language is this: You have a picture or idea in your brain that needs to be transmitted over ASCII into my brain. The conventional symbol set for this use case are English words. A priori we received a dictionary of words and their meanings that we assume is identical to all parties. Trouble is that it isn't. IF and only IF the goal of BOTH parties is to reproduce the original message with highest possible fidelity, then the receiver will obtain a copy of the transmitter's dictionary, and use the updated definitions to reproduce the transmitter's message.

However if the goal of the receiver is to discredit the transmitter or distract from the point being made, then a great tactic, akin to DNS hijack, is to push onto all receivers an alternative dictionary to the one used by the transmitter. In this case the alterative dictionary elicits outrage, discrediting the transmitter, and hijacking the original discussion.

CNN, for example, their goal is NOT to reproduce with high fidelity what congressman X said, rather, their goal is ___ (insert: make it more entertaining, make it more newsworthy, make it click-bait suitable, keep viewers watching, attract ad dollars, curry political favor, drive their own agenda, etc). In addition to pushing an alternative dictionary, they can reinforce with cutting phrases out of context, using selective historical imagery and video, bringing 'experts' to present their views.

In summary I feel that HG was using an alternative dictionary attack (akin to DNS hijack), to distract from the substantive content in the OP.

[pdabbadabba]

That's an interesting explanation, and it's an astute way of describing tactics that are sometimes employed in political debates. But as applied to this case, I think it fails to address some key issues.

1. What reason would HG have to distract from the substantive content in the OP's comment?

2. HG was not the only person who found OP's comment objectionable. Do we all have ulterior motivess?

3. There are, I think, objective reasons for finding parts of OP's comment objectionable, which HG, myself, and others, have thoroughly expressed elsewhere in this thread. Do you have a response to these substantive points, or are you merely concerned about HG's reasons for raising them (and, perhaps, his./her tone in doing so)?

I for one think that OP's comment is interesting, and I have no interest in distracting from its substance. But I do hope to point out how some unfortunate, casual choice of words may have inadvertently caused harm to other members of our community.

I'd also point out that, like the dictionary attack that you describe, baselessly impugning an opponent's motivations is also a tried and true tactic for distracting others from the substance of what they have to say, without meaningfully engaging with it.

[lighttower]

I don't suspect users here have conscious ulterior motives. I think that ____ (insert one of {media, communists, political elites, liberals, aliens, etc}) have conditioned knee-jerk language-policing. This has the side-effect of taking the current thread off topic while muting substantive discourse in this and future posts.

The dictionary attack has been practiced in media for a long time. Watch a famous 50s news anchor interview an atheist author (I can think of specifics, but I don't want to bias you). Back then it was obvious they were distorting what the interviewee was saying. The viewing audience wasn't stupid, they were complicit because they didn't agree with the atheist. Today this goes on, and occurs so regularly that no one cares if someone deliberately misunderstands something in order to be outraged. Actually whats even more telling is that this technique is a standard way to "communicate" political messages - just watch the campaigners.

I learned this dictionary problem while managing a startup with some employees who used a different dictionary than I. I'd say 80% of the conflict at work was due I say X while the other understood X'

Really if I had a way to efficiently and reliably transfer images in my head into theirs we would have saved countless hours and dollars

[jameshart]

Wow. You've gone from accusing people of faking outrage, to accusing people of executing a CNN-style 'dictionary attack'(?), to suggesting an alien communist liberal conspiracy...

... and you think that OTHER people are taking the thread off-topic and muting substantive discourse?

[lighttower]

Do you really not see the humor in political elites & aliens? Or are you just providing the readership with a textbook example of becoming outraged by deliberately interpreting things wrongly?

[aninhumer]

I strongly agree with this criticism of the language (I winced reading it), but I also agree that the way it was criticised here was unnecessarily inflammatory.

There are many people who are not sympathetic to calls for PC language, and including accusations of "insane chauvinism" isn't going to make them any more palatable.

[jameshart]

And that's the important issue, after all. We need to make sure that people who enjoy sexist language feel welcome in the technology industry and on forums like this, because otherwise we would so rarely get to hear their perspective.

[aninhumer]

That depends, do you want to feel smug and righteous, or do you actually want to convince people that what they're doing is harmful?

Being right is not a substitute for being persuasive.

[pdabbadabba]

Fair enough. I agree that the comment could have been more carefully worded. Note, though, that this does not (I hope!) explain the cool reception (to put it mildly) to my own comments in the same vein.

[Kalium]

The comment was, well, offensively chauvinist.