Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2 - Less Wrong
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Ch. 42:
The idea of casual acceptance of homosexuality in magical Britain doesn't seem to be thought out fully. Even this very chapter (and I've noticed that major premises from one chapter tend not to show up in others, but that's a separate issue), there's the casual assumption (inherited from canon, inherited in turn from most of Western media as a whole) that "thinks Harry/Draco is hawt" equals "female". About fifteen percent of those squeeing fans should have been boys.
Really? Fifteen percent of all yaoi fans are yaoi fanboys and eighty-five percent are yaoi fangirls? I'd like to see that statistic before I believe it. Also, you've got to keep in mind that we're talking about the set of yaoi fans who are squeeing over Harry and Draco while they're still eleven. This, to me, says "yaoi fangirl", though I fully admit I'm working from 100% stereotypes and 0% experience.
That's not representative. Yaoi specifically, as opposed to fiction depicting male homosexual relationships in general, is written almost exclusively by women for girls. The issues addressed are calques of the issues that come with being a teenage girl -- some works go so far as to get the guys pregnant.
Huh? Why is yaoi fandom the relevant population?
Ah, I see what is going on. When Pavitra wrote "thinks Harry/Draco is hawt", did he mean "thinks Harry is sexy and/or thinks Draco is sexy" or did he mean "thinks that the concept of a romantic relationship between them is an exciting concept"?
FYI, X/Y is read "X slash Y" and is a way of calling out a ship.
Cool. Thx. I'm more ancient than I like to admit, and this is my first fanfic experience. I'm very proud that I didn't have to look up "ship".
I however did -- because I didn't find my correct guess plausible. (An apostrophe would help: " 'ship ".)
(Imagine if I wrote: "It was my first ence of that sort." You might be able to guess that "experience" is the most likely meaning, but it would need verification and still feel weird afterward.)
I also don't understand "call out": does it mean "refer to", or "advocate"?
I'm tempted to start using "ence" as an abbreviation for "experience". I like the sound of it and it seems like a word that deserves a monosyllabic version.
I know people who use "tech" for "technique," "grade" for "upgrade," etc. Once you get used to it, it really is more efficient, but at the price of making it more difficult for outsiders to understand what you're saying.
For a while I've wondered what exactly Robin Hanson is doing (what he's trying to signal, perhaps? I don't know) when he uses abbreviations like "med", "docs", "tech", etc. (Pretty sure there are other common ones not coming to my mind right now.) He doesn't otherwise come off as a lazy writer, he can't really pass for "folksy" (and super-contrarian econblogging isn't quite the right context for that anyway), they aren't difficult or cumbersome words...
This is the characteristic feature of jargon. (And fanfic has its jargon like anything else.)
I've seen "tech" for "technology" but not for "technique". Interesting.
Bah. Those two abbreviations are terrible. People use those? There is no context where tech(nique) is used in which the existing use of tech(nology) wouldn't be appropriate, given that techniques can be considered technology. Why oh why would you not use 'nique' or 'niq'? I suspect I would be willing to signal myself as an outsider so as to avoid sacrificing my dignity like that!
The word already has a monosyllabic version (exp) but it is interesting to note that an "ence" variant is probably still warranted. I would still use 'experience' in the places where people may abbreviate to ence, because it feels right to my intuitions. "Exp" is a resource that I acquire but experiences, they are things to be savoured. I want to be fully present, in the moment for the full three syllables. In the same vein I would 'ship' combinations I was somewhat distancing myself from or perhaps considering particularly abstractly but I would never consider using that jargon in relation to Harry and Hermione for example. If I didn't use 'relationship' I would rephrase the context such that another word or phrase (connection? or 'author conveyed a bond between'?) fit the context.
I like Ence as a separate word from Exp for two reasons. First, Exp is very strongly tied to a meaning in games that is in important ways opposite from the meaning we would want Ence to have. And second, I don't think "exp" counts as properly monosyllabic; the monosoyllabic prononciation /eksp/ has a consonant cluster that many languages and English dialects don't allow in speech, causing speakers to automatically expand it to /ek.spi/.
I had to look it up too, but I do note that the changed usage of ship vs relationship makes leaving off the apostrophe appropriate. 'Relationship' can't be used as a verb!
In this context, it means something like "name" or "denote".
The latter. And I talked about yaoi fans because Eliezer did.