Pronouns & sexual

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 5:57 PM, Paul Kershaw <ptkershaw@...> wrote:
> Never say "nobody." I do this all the time, and I've seen others do it as well.
Fine, you caught me on a bit of hyperbole. :-P

To be more precise, it is extremely rare in any public media forum of debate.

(If you have a counterexample, please email it to me privately.)

> As to the fat man: I wouldn't push him, but not for the reason you give. Feel
> free to contact me privately if you want more information.
FWIW, I should have mentioned that I totally stole that example from
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/28 (who in turn
stole it from a very commonly cited cogsci thought experiment). The
show's quite good; if you haven't heard it, I recommend you do.

> Again, it depends. How broad or narrow are your frames? I think you're assuming
> dichotomous perspectives, but most topics are much more complex than that.
Sorry; that I gave only two views was purely incidental. I did not
mean to imply dichotomy; indeed, I tried to emphasize that IMO this is
*not* a matter of "opposing" arguments in any real sense, but rather
ones that are orthogonal to each other (and that confusing this
orthogonality with opposition is the source of ineffective strife). No
doubt there could be any number of mutually orthogonal views on any
topic you'd like; I chose ones simply by salience.

> Conversely, I wouldn't want such a language, because it would shortcut even more than we
> already do. Postmodernism, for instance, has its own vocabulary set. This has
> several detrimental effects: It makes it difficult for someone to enter a
> dialogue on postmodernism, and if someone uses a piece of pomo jargon, an
> anti-pomo person will often color all further comments from that person as
> "pomo tripe." The latter happens quite regularly in the more sensitive topics
> you've mentioned.
Could you give an example for this or elaborate? I don't follow.

> To a certain extent, though, such linguistic framing already takes place, in
> the form of key jargon words or phrases that reveal particular schools of
> thought. The use of "pro-choice" and "pro-life" is a blatant example: Each
> terms summarizes one of the main underlying axioms of each position.
Definitely.

> I think it's more common in this world than you suspect. They're mostly those
> people sitting quietly on the sidelines while the extremes scream at each
> other. :D
*laugh* I'd honestly like to believe that. And indeed I think that any
sincere person who thinks about the issues in any depth will come to
do so.

But IME, most people *don't* tend to think about things in this
manner; they just go with whatever is convenient or 'normal' for their
immediate culture. And for highly sensitive issues like these, it can
be quite hard to consider others' views without dismissing them out of
hand.

I know that I'm on the far end of meta-thinking, so I try to
compensate in expectations of others. Perhaps I'm overcompensating.
;-)

- Sai