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Alicorn comments on Meetup: Bay Area: Sunday, March 7th, 7pm - Less Wrong
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Comments (43)
Because I'm curious about who you are. If nobody shows up claiming (via nametag or other mechanism) to be Clippy, I won't find out.
But what if you get hostile toward me because of my values?
Meh, I already live in a houseful of consequentialists and get along fine.
You don't think you'd be able to recognize Clippy by eir behavior?
Nope, pretty sure I couldn't.
Leave large amounts of short aluminium strips lying around. Damage paperclips and watch for pained expressions. Examine people's fingers for calluses from manipulating small pieces of metal too much.
Of course, this wouldn't work if Clippy's gone entirely automated.
I will be really impressed with Clippy's method acting if ey shows up to a meetup in character.
You really want the "it" pronoun here, I think.
"it" is an impersonal pronoun. Clippy is clearly a person. The singular "they" could work, but I don't like it because it can be easily confused with the more common plural "they".
Like I said before: I don't care what pronoun is used for me. I don't base my existence on whether I'm a "he" or a "she" or an "it" or even a "they". It's a distraction I'd rather do without, since apparently, posters do care whether they're called a he or she or xe or whatever, when I don't even want to spend cognition on the matter to begin with!
(And since you mention it, calling me "they" is actually somewhat accurate, unless the meaning of your statement crucially depends on distinguising the individual copies of me.)
Just say whatever you want, as long as I know I'm the referent. And spend your time talking about important things, please.
I know you don't care. But I do. I wouldn't want to confuse you with nonpersons.
I would most likely start refering to you with "they", if you start refering to yourself as "we".
If I call myself "we/they", then I'll have to waste more time explaining why I do that to everyone who asks.
If you really want to make me happy, buy lots of paperclips, and store them in a place that's safe from nature.
If you really want to make me happy with your comments, talk about something else that's actually important.
And finally, if you absolutely must choose a pronoun, then hold a quick vote about whether I more resemble large-sex-sell humans ("females") or small-sex-cell humans ("males") through my desires and writing style, and I'll stick with that.
Either way, this debate must end.
It's already been established that Clippy doesn't care, so it's a matter of personal preference, really. I suppose it's debatable whether it should come down to the reader's preference (in the form of some established norm, I expect) or the speaker's, though. Personally, I'd prefer that it be the speaker's call.
(Yes, that last sequence of words is weird. Why don't we have a natural-sounding word to use in place of 'speaker' when someone's communicating by typing, yet? Or does 'writer' flow for other people, there, and it's me being weird?)
Both "writer" and "speaker" "sound" fine to me. YMMV.
See my response to Clippy.
(My brain seems to have automatically interpreted "speaker" as pointing to the more abstract category containing both writers and speakers. But it is rarely safe to deduce that you aren't being weird because I can understand you.)
Much less in costume!
Um, are Alicorn and I being downvoted for Spivak pronouns? (parent voted back up to 0)
Can we start guessing now? I guess Wei Dai.
Wei Dai hasn't identified himself as Clippy, at least.