Regarding the "language is evolving" argument. Language evolves as the users change its usage. I am a user. I choose to not change the language keeping its evolution right where it is. If the majority doesn't like that, tough. I'm trying to evolve the language back to the original from which they evolved it.
[This was also in the comment thread for my previous post]
A question for commenters that has nothing to do with this post.
I have considered offering a paid option for my posts. It would provide nothing not available with the free option, just a way for people to pay me if they feel like it. I don't need the money, would probably pass it on to the Institute for Justice, the one charity I routinely support.
My reason to do it is largely my memory of my relation with SSC, which for some time was a majority of my time online. I arranged to pay money to Scott's Patreon because I was getting a large benefit from his work and felt I owed him payment. I'm not sure if enough people would feel that way about my posts to make it worth offering the option, or whether there might be negative effects.
I enjoy your blog, but I don't accept money on my Substack for the same reason I don't pay for others - the instant money is involved, it becomes stressful. You're an economist though, and would probably find it fun to manipulate
It wouldn't be stressful from my standpoint. The knowledge that lots of people were willing to pay lots of money for my writing would be evidence that I was doing something they valued. I don't need the money, but it would be nice to know that if I did I could support myself by my writing.
But the reason I write is to spread ideas, so if having a paid option resulted in fewer people reading my writing that would be a negative.
I don't normally subscribe to paid sites; I'm reluctant even to subscribe to sites where I have to log in. I don't have a fixed policy of never contributing to a site. However, if I want to donate to the Institute for Justice, I'll do so directly, rather than by way of donating to you; since you've said that that's what you would probably do with any donation, that's a reason for me not to donate to you. (If you said you would donate to an unspecified charity, that would be an even stronger reason, as you might donate to a charity whose work I considered harmful.)
I am not against paying for my reading pleasure, but I, like Jorg, enjoy just reading for free. Mainly, for me, it gets confusing. I use Feedly for the most part. Much of what I read is free, but occasionally one of my favorite writers will, just some of the time, put an article behind a paywall. Problem is, I can never keep track of which writers I've paid for, how long ago, or on which platform I paid for them. And many of them hop around from one platform to another, trying to find the one with the best fit. Sometimes one of my favorite sites will feature an article that links me to another site which then forwards me on again, and I end up trying to read an article that gives me one paragraph and then asks me to pay for a subscription at a place I've never heard of, which, of course, I'm just not going to do. So, this isn't your fault at all, David, but it's worn me out, and I've sort of given up on trying to pay for even those who, I think, are worth it. Some day, it might get easier to manage, but for now, I just really appreciate you for not making me go through that.
When I decided to put in a paid option fully knowing (and advertising) that there was zero extra paid content, just throwing some cash my way for books, coffee and metal, it was due to the logic of @Parrhesia. He made the argument that who was he to tell other people what they should spend money on, or whether or not they enjoyed his work enough to want to pay for it, so why not let them give him some money if they preferred? Made a lot of sense to me.
Fair warning, it might not have been him, but Mike Hind instead. It was a long time ago :D
My latest argument on Youtube is about atheism and agnostic.
I said, "look, everyone has their own connotation, so using the label is functionally useless, except just in polite non-specific discussion."
But this guy wanted to stick to some idea of what a dictionary said and what common usage was for "100 years" to tell me I'm not an atheist, I'm an agnostic.
I'm like, "dude, I don't believe in a God or gods so I'm an atheist. Period."
What speculation about what might be possible doesn't change me to an agnostic. Jesus.
Urggggg....and the pedo thing, I get tired of correcting people on this one as they think it makes me some kind of advocate or fan of predators.
Sorry, but if you only consult the DM-5 you'll see that if pedo means anyone under the age of consent then every straight man in America was a pedeophile back when Britney Spears was 17 or when the movie Blue Lagoon was in theaters.
Interesting trivia about that, assuming this story isn't anecdotal, Brooke Shields was called to testify before Congress, in the version I heard, to state for the record that they used a stunt double for the topless scene and that whenever she was on camera, her breasts were covered with hair that was glued to her body....
Americans are just weird, at least that's what the French tell me.
The problem is that the words lost have not been replaced by substitutes conveying the same meaning. Since "crisis" has come to mean the same thing as "problem" we don't have a word that means what crisis used to mean. Same with "incredible" and "unbelievable,"which no longer refer to things things that are not credible or not believable.
I'm pedantic when it comes to words, but I'll be honest, turning a normal (or birthday-sounding) phrase like "begging the question" into an idiom and then shaming people for using it literally is a d**k move.
That isn't the case, however. Firstly, what does it mean to "beg a question" literally? You beg a person to get something; you are begging for that something. To literally beg a question you would need to be saying something along the lines of "Please, question, I would like some more."
Secondly, it is a translation (an awkward one) of a phrase used in logic. People started using it because it sounded like something smart people would use, then misused it. It is the same case as misuse of "ironic". People should be shamed for trying to sound smart without knowing what the hell they are actually saying.
I have to note, by the way, that I don't find the forms "firstly" and "secondly" acceptable. The -ly suffix usually marks a word as an adjective. But it's perfectly grammatical to say "Fred arrived last," and it's clear that "last" is an adverb modifying "arrived"; the -ly suffix is "Fred arrived lastly" is never needed to make the syntax clear or to show that "last" is an adverb. In parallel, "Daphne arrived first, Velma arrived second, and Fred arrived last" is perfectly grammatical. All of those ordinals can be adverbial as easily as adjectival.
I mean that people often use ironic incorrectly, typically using it when they mean coincidental. Ironic went from being a very rarely used word to being frequently used by those trying to sound educated yet were ignorant of it's meaning. You will note that many of the words on David's list are scientific terms or the like, and have been grasped by those wanting to sound smart and misused.
it's ironic when an attempt to appear smart has the reverse effect; "better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open one's mouth and thereby remove all doubt," as it has been said
My biggest pet peeve is "algorithm." An algorithm is an abstract computational process for solving a problem. Many people think algorithms are inherently intrusive on their privacy and that software should be written without algorithms. Software without algorithms would be coding by guesswork and would be so buggy it would be useless.
I suspect, but cannot prove, that the "algorithms" that feed us advertising would be more properly called "heuristics" as by definition an algorithm will always produce the correct answer, while these heuristics feed me advertisements for e.g. underwire bras
In a computer science class many years ago, I was taught that order of magnitude doesn't necessarily mean factors of ten, but depends on the context/scale in question. It often does mean powers of ten, because most of what we discuss is measured in decimal. However, if I say I have one megabyte of storage available on my flash drive but I actually have thirty, I am off by (approximately) five orders of magnitude, not one. Perhaps this usage is specific to computer science, however.
John McWhorter has pointed out that 'literally' has been used in the way you describe going back at least to the 19th century. The meaning of words changes over time etc. I do think that this usage of 'literally' can interfere with the usage of the word to mean 'not figurative' , and I find that annoying.
The phrase I've enjoyed puzzling over lately is 'intermittent fasting'. I've known a number of methods of fasting, but I've never known a single one that was not intermittent. At least one done by choice.
> “Chemical” is used as a vague negative term for the sorts of icky things that organic food is supposed to not have.
Personally I think all chemicals should be banned, the worst one of which is Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO), a colourless odourless liquid used as an industrial solvant and a coolant in nuclear power stations. Did you know that in autopsies, many people who died of cancer had traces of DHMO in their bodies? Join my campaign to ban DHMO now!
Words mean what they're commonly used to mean. Dictionaries describe usage, and that's what dictionary compilers think they're doing. They're not trying to tell people what words should mean, they're describing the things they can mean.
Literally has meant figuratively for literally thousands of years.
And if you're going to insist that 'chemical' is a synonym for 'matter' then we'll need another word for 'novel substance which was not commonly present in the environment in which we evolved', which is what people actually mean by 'chemical'. Even *chemists* don't think of water as a chemical, or write 'chemical store' on the doors of all the cupboards where there are things.
I am sad about 'exponential' though, because I can remember when it meant something precise in mathematics. I think it started during the pandemic when people started to use it to mean 'curve bends upwards'. We're going to have to accept that we've lost it and make up another word for the concept of geometric growth.
I used to be a stickler for "correct" English. What changed my heart on the issue was the book "The Story of Human Language", which is an excellent survey of linguistics and the history of languages. I now understand that any language that manages to convey its meaning is "correct". Standard forms are a result of a somewhat arbitrary codification of a particular form into writing. This does not make other existing forms "wrong" by any means. And, the fact that human language continues to evolve (as it always has) after codification does not make the evolved language "wrong". I listened to the audiobook (read by the author) and wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone with an interest in language!
Not quite the same, but I'm always surprised by how many people mix up former and latter. Former just sounds like it means former, and latter, latter. To me, that is, but evidently not to all.
And it's a hoary complaint, but disinterested is a useful word. No one needs another synonym for uninterested.
Regarding the "language is evolving" argument. Language evolves as the users change its usage. I am a user. I choose to not change the language keeping its evolution right where it is. If the majority doesn't like that, tough. I'm trying to evolve the language back to the original from which they evolved it.
[This was also in the comment thread for my previous post]
A question for commenters that has nothing to do with this post.
I have considered offering a paid option for my posts. It would provide nothing not available with the free option, just a way for people to pay me if they feel like it. I don't need the money, would probably pass it on to the Institute for Justice, the one charity I routinely support.
My reason to do it is largely my memory of my relation with SSC, which for some time was a majority of my time online. I arranged to pay money to Scott's Patreon because I was getting a large benefit from his work and felt I owed him payment. I'm not sure if enough people would feel that way about my posts to make it worth offering the option, or whether there might be negative effects.
Opinions?
I enjoy your blog, but I don't accept money on my Substack for the same reason I don't pay for others - the instant money is involved, it becomes stressful. You're an economist though, and would probably find it fun to manipulate
It wouldn't be stressful from my standpoint. The knowledge that lots of people were willing to pay lots of money for my writing would be evidence that I was doing something they valued. I don't need the money, but it would be nice to know that if I did I could support myself by my writing.
But the reason I write is to spread ideas, so if having a paid option resulted in fewer people reading my writing that would be a negative.
I don't normally subscribe to paid sites; I'm reluctant even to subscribe to sites where I have to log in. I don't have a fixed policy of never contributing to a site. However, if I want to donate to the Institute for Justice, I'll do so directly, rather than by way of donating to you; since you've said that that's what you would probably do with any donation, that's a reason for me not to donate to you. (If you said you would donate to an unspecified charity, that would be an even stronger reason, as you might donate to a charity whose work I considered harmful.)
I am not against paying for my reading pleasure, but I, like Jorg, enjoy just reading for free. Mainly, for me, it gets confusing. I use Feedly for the most part. Much of what I read is free, but occasionally one of my favorite writers will, just some of the time, put an article behind a paywall. Problem is, I can never keep track of which writers I've paid for, how long ago, or on which platform I paid for them. And many of them hop around from one platform to another, trying to find the one with the best fit. Sometimes one of my favorite sites will feature an article that links me to another site which then forwards me on again, and I end up trying to read an article that gives me one paragraph and then asks me to pay for a subscription at a place I've never heard of, which, of course, I'm just not going to do. So, this isn't your fault at all, David, but it's worn me out, and I've sort of given up on trying to pay for even those who, I think, are worth it. Some day, it might get easier to manage, but for now, I just really appreciate you for not making me go through that.
Let me think about it a bit. I'm certainly not automatically against it, but I do budget my pleasures, and a free one has been nice.
When I decided to put in a paid option fully knowing (and advertising) that there was zero extra paid content, just throwing some cash my way for books, coffee and metal, it was due to the logic of @Parrhesia. He made the argument that who was he to tell other people what they should spend money on, or whether or not they enjoyed his work enough to want to pay for it, so why not let them give him some money if they preferred? Made a lot of sense to me.
Fair warning, it might not have been him, but Mike Hind instead. It was a long time ago :D
XKCD will feel stupid when we're all killed because some a**hole used "literally" to an AI.
My latest argument on Youtube is about atheism and agnostic.
I said, "look, everyone has their own connotation, so using the label is functionally useless, except just in polite non-specific discussion."
But this guy wanted to stick to some idea of what a dictionary said and what common usage was for "100 years" to tell me I'm not an atheist, I'm an agnostic.
I'm like, "dude, I don't believe in a God or gods so I'm an atheist. Period."
What speculation about what might be possible doesn't change me to an agnostic. Jesus.
Urggggg....and the pedo thing, I get tired of correcting people on this one as they think it makes me some kind of advocate or fan of predators.
Sorry, but if you only consult the DM-5 you'll see that if pedo means anyone under the age of consent then every straight man in America was a pedeophile back when Britney Spears was 17 or when the movie Blue Lagoon was in theaters.
Interesting trivia about that, assuming this story isn't anecdotal, Brooke Shields was called to testify before Congress, in the version I heard, to state for the record that they used a stunt double for the topless scene and that whenever she was on camera, her breasts were covered with hair that was glued to her body....
Americans are just weird, at least that's what the French tell me.
For me, all of this is inconceivable!
Quit rhyming, I mean it!
Anyone want a peanut?
Classic movie.
"You keep using that word . . ." LOL
In regards to abuse, for all intensive purposes there are less words used properly everyday.
fewer. Or was that the humorous point?
Well, one of them, I think. The other was using the incorrect form of "all intents and purposes" . . .
I didn't catch that part. Thank you. Not reading carefully I guess.
The problem is that the words lost have not been replaced by substitutes conveying the same meaning. Since "crisis" has come to mean the same thing as "problem" we don't have a word that means what crisis used to mean. Same with "incredible" and "unbelievable,"which no longer refer to things things that are not credible or not believable.
I'm pedantic when it comes to words, but I'll be honest, turning a normal (or birthday-sounding) phrase like "begging the question" into an idiom and then shaming people for using it literally is a d**k move.
That isn't the case, however. Firstly, what does it mean to "beg a question" literally? You beg a person to get something; you are begging for that something. To literally beg a question you would need to be saying something along the lines of "Please, question, I would like some more."
Secondly, it is a translation (an awkward one) of a phrase used in logic. People started using it because it sounded like something smart people would use, then misused it. It is the same case as misuse of "ironic". People should be shamed for trying to sound smart without knowing what the hell they are actually saying.
I find it ironic that ironic has nothing to do with iron while metallic is all about metal
You're being very ambidextrous.
I have to note, by the way, that I don't find the forms "firstly" and "secondly" acceptable. The -ly suffix usually marks a word as an adjective. But it's perfectly grammatical to say "Fred arrived last," and it's clear that "last" is an adverb modifying "arrived"; the -ly suffix is "Fred arrived lastly" is never needed to make the syntax clear or to show that "last" is an adverb. In parallel, "Daphne arrived first, Velma arrived second, and Fred arrived last" is perfectly grammatical. All of those ordinals can be adverbial as easily as adjectival.
Pro tip: the suffix -ly generally denotes an adverb, not an adjective. Dave is quick; he runs quickly.
Right. My mistake; I thought "adverb" and typed "adjective." However, there are numerous adverbs that don't need the -ly.
what did you mean by “the misuse of ‘ironic’”?
I mean that people often use ironic incorrectly, typically using it when they mean coincidental. Ironic went from being a very rarely used word to being frequently used by those trying to sound educated yet were ignorant of it's meaning. You will note that many of the words on David's list are scientific terms or the like, and have been grasped by those wanting to sound smart and misused.
ok, thank you for the clarification.
it's ironic when an attempt to appear smart has the reverse effect; "better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open one's mouth and thereby remove all doubt," as it has been said
People who misuse "begs the question" just make themselves look snottily stupid.
Hold the line against the dumbing down of the language.
My biggest pet peeve is "algorithm." An algorithm is an abstract computational process for solving a problem. Many people think algorithms are inherently intrusive on their privacy and that software should be written without algorithms. Software without algorithms would be coding by guesswork and would be so buggy it would be useless.
There are often times when I feel like I'm experiencing web sites designed without algorithms
I suspect, but cannot prove, that the "algorithms" that feed us advertising would be more properly called "heuristics" as by definition an algorithm will always produce the correct answer, while these heuristics feed me advertisements for e.g. underwire bras
It's perfectly possible to write an algorithm that produces incorrect answers.
In a computer science class many years ago, I was taught that order of magnitude doesn't necessarily mean factors of ten, but depends on the context/scale in question. It often does mean powers of ten, because most of what we discuss is measured in decimal. However, if I say I have one megabyte of storage available on my flash drive but I actually have thirty, I am off by (approximately) five orders of magnitude, not one. Perhaps this usage is specific to computer science, however.
Presumably meaning powers of two. I haven't encountered that usage of the term.
John McWhorter has pointed out that 'literally' has been used in the way you describe going back at least to the 19th century. The meaning of words changes over time etc. I do think that this usage of 'literally' can interfere with the usage of the word to mean 'not figurative' , and I find that annoying.
The phrase I've enjoyed puzzling over lately is 'intermittent fasting'. I've known a number of methods of fasting, but I've never known a single one that was not intermittent. At least one done by choice.
> “Chemical” is used as a vague negative term for the sorts of icky things that organic food is supposed to not have.
Personally I think all chemicals should be banned, the worst one of which is Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO), a colourless odourless liquid used as an industrial solvant and a coolant in nuclear power stations. Did you know that in autopsies, many people who died of cancer had traces of DHMO in their bodies? Join my campaign to ban DHMO now!
Words mean what they're commonly used to mean. Dictionaries describe usage, and that's what dictionary compilers think they're doing. They're not trying to tell people what words should mean, they're describing the things they can mean.
Literally has meant figuratively for literally thousands of years.
And if you're going to insist that 'chemical' is a synonym for 'matter' then we'll need another word for 'novel substance which was not commonly present in the environment in which we evolved', which is what people actually mean by 'chemical'. Even *chemists* don't think of water as a chemical, or write 'chemical store' on the doors of all the cupboards where there are things.
I am sad about 'exponential' though, because I can remember when it meant something precise in mathematics. I think it started during the pandemic when people started to use it to mean 'curve bends upwards'. We're going to have to accept that we've lost it and make up another word for the concept of geometric growth.
I used to be a stickler for "correct" English. What changed my heart on the issue was the book "The Story of Human Language", which is an excellent survey of linguistics and the history of languages. I now understand that any language that manages to convey its meaning is "correct". Standard forms are a result of a somewhat arbitrary codification of a particular form into writing. This does not make other existing forms "wrong" by any means. And, the fact that human language continues to evolve (as it always has) after codification does not make the evolved language "wrong". I listened to the audiobook (read by the author) and wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone with an interest in language!
Not quite the same, but I'm always surprised by how many people mix up former and latter. Former just sounds like it means former, and latter, latter. To me, that is, but evidently not to all.
And it's a hoary complaint, but disinterested is a useful word. No one needs another synonym for uninterested.