komponisto comments on Existential Risk - Less Wrong

28 Post author: lukeprog 15 November 2011 02:23PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (108)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: steven0461 16 November 2011 12:02:50AM *  6 points [-]

I think Luke may have been trying to take after Singularity University, which doesn't use "the", because that seems to be the convention for universities? But yes, I agree the lack of a definite article here is grating. It creates impression that writer of sentence is Russian.

Comment author: komponisto 16 November 2011 12:23:55AM *  2 points [-]

...Singularity University, which doesn't use "the", because that seems to be the convention for universities?

Specifically, it's the convention for university names following the formula "X University" (as opposed to "University of/for/in X"). These should be thought of as analogous to geographic place-names (which is what they basically are): "Hamilton County", "Bikini Atoll", "Harvard University", etc. ("Singularity University" would be analogous to "Treasure Island".)

There are a few rare exceptions: The George Washington University, The Ohio State University (both articles often "mistakenly" omitted!), the Bering Strait.

Anyway, why in the world would SI want to "take after" SU? The risk of confusion between these two organizations is large enough as it is.