prase comments on Sequence Exercise: "Extensions and Intensions" from "A Human's Guide to Words" - Less Wrong

12 Post author: Normal_Anomaly 17 April 2011 08:22PM

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Comment author: prase 18 April 2011 04:04:57PM *  1 point [-]

My reasons to think of dictators and their collaborators as politicians are:

  1. They hold analogical offices as the democratic politicans (presidents, ministers, deputies).
  2. There is a weak need to have a name for that category of people in autoritarian regimes, and there is no other good label available.
  3. There is no sharp boundary between democracy and dictatorship, so it is possible to extend the category of democratic politicians over the whatever-you-call-it category of deputies, ministers etc. in any regime.
  4. Those people call themselves politicians.
  5. The word politics isn't reserved for democratic politics as well.

I think my usage may not be non-standard after all, as e.g. Wikipedia states that Beria was a Soviet politician.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 19 April 2011 12:53:02AM 0 points [-]

Hm. It's probably me with the non-standard usage. I was thinking that if dictators were politicians, so were generals and kings, and that didn't seem right.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 19 April 2011 02:19:46AM 0 points [-]

Can you say more about why kings don't seem like politicians? (I think I sort of understand the argument for generals.)

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 19 April 2011 03:16:27AM 0 points [-]

There's a cultural difference. The image a kind needs to cultivate is different from that of a modern senator; so is the way they go about doing it. So is the way they prepare for and obtain their power. And the connotations I've picked up for them differ somewhat too. Politician implies semi-concealed corruption. King implies either noble righteousness or really obvious corruption.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 19 April 2011 03:24:21AM 1 point [-]

Interesting. Thanks for unpacking that.

For my own part, while I share what I think is the meaning of "politician" you are working with here, I seem to also have a distinct meaning for it which is just someone who primarily achieves their ends via manipulation of group hierarchies. (In that sense, for example, I often talk about some managers being politicians while others are technicians.)

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 19 April 2011 03:39:17AM 0 points [-]

That's an interesting way of thinking about it. Thanks for starting this conversation, it was fun.

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