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Alicorn comments on Phoenix Less Wrong Meetup- Saturday, 5-7-11, 5pm - Less Wrong
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Comments (54)
Tempting (not my dialect, but otherwise appropriate) but does that derive from "wacko" or something else related to disparaging words for mental illness? That sort of thing is considered ableist too. (For this reason I have taken to calling stupid people "fools" and "dolts" instead of "idiots" or "morons" when I remember the difference, and I'm trying with less success to remember "loon" for describing people who behave in extreme or erratic ways; I'm not sure if that's technically the bird or a shortening of "lunatic", but it's probably better than "crazy".)
I'm neutral on "lame", but not using "idiot" or "moron" is very silly. First of all, the terms were insults before they were technical terms - a sketchy psychologist trying to create a hierarchy of mental retardation just borrowed a few Greek words meaning "fool" which had been adopted into English with their current non-technical meaning long before. Second, practically no one uses them as technical terms anymore and they're severely discouraged in medical settings, partly because they were never that useful to begin with and partly because they're insulting (the currently accepted terms for the same concept are things like "mental retardation" to "profound mental retardation"). Third, idiots in the technical sense (which, I repeat, is never used) would be incapable of being insulted by the term since they cannot understand language.
"Lunatic" is also never used nowadays, and I'm curious whether you also avoid the terms "crazy" and "insane".
I'm mostly working by accepting what amounts to received wisdom from bloggers, who say that "idiot" and "moron" (and for that matter "retarded") are not okay. I don't desperately want any of these words, and the above alternatives exist without (as far as I can tell) offending the bloggers or the people they speak for, so I invest a minor effort in the vocab shift. I'm less willing to do this sort of thing when there is no viable alternative word with the right features.
I use "crazy" and "insane" sometimes, but I have been encouraging the preexisting shift in their meanings towards a not-necessarily-negative meaning of "extreme" (e.g. "this ice cream is insanely yummy!")
If I remember correctly, the bird name and the ableist term have pretty similar etymology (both are related to 'luna'; the latter is related to the old belief that full moon causes aggressive/unpredictable behavior - see also werewolf myths). It might not be possible to disentangle them sufficiently to figure out where 'loony' came from, but I've never seen it considered offensive so I suspect you're okay.
Loony? As in "loony bin"? How could that possibly be considered less offensive than 'lame'? It is a huge deprecation of those with mental health problems. Of course mental health problems are lower status than physical ones - and for something to be 'offensive' the insulted group has to have social power.
Social consequences of an intense version of concern about insults. More
It's not the same at LW-- we've got civility rules which forbid personal attacks-- but this might be of interest.
At least, we have civility rules which puts bounds on the nature and style of the personal attacks. As well as in which contexts personal attacks are acceptable, who is permitted to make them and who it is acceptable to attack.
That is, we're kind of like any other human social group.
It's plausible that I was being too abstract. Still, some of the ideas which have apparently plagued feminist blogs are in play here, without such extreme ill effects, and it might be worth looking for an explanation.
LW is more consequentialist than most places, and that might help.
To be frank I think people have brought their issues from feminist blogs here more than enough and then some.