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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on The Useful Idea of Truth - Less Wrong
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I don't like the "post-utopian" example. I can totally expect differing sensory experiences depending on whether a writer is post-utopian or not. For example, if they're post-utopian, when reading their biography I would more strongly expect reading about them having been into utopian ideas when they were young, but having then changed their mind. And when reading their works, I would more strongly expect seeing themes of the imperfectability of the world and weltschmerz.
Is this actually a standard term? I was trying to make up a new one, without having to actually delve into the pits of darkness and find a real postmodern literary term that doesn't mean anything.
I don't think you can avoid the criticism of "literary terms actually do tend to make one expect differing sensory experiences, and your characterization of the field is unfair" simply by inventing a term which isn't actually in use. I don't know whether "post-utopian" is actually a standard term, but yli's comment doesn't depend on it being one.
Well, there are a lot of hits for "post-utopian" on Google, and they don't seem to be references to you.
I think there were fewer Google references back when I first made up the word... I will happily accept nominations for either an equally portentous-sounding but unused term, or a portentous-sounding real literary term that is known not to mean anything.
Has anyone ever told you your writing style is Alucentian to the core? Especially in the way your municardist influences constrain the transactional nuances of your structural ephamthism.
This looks promising. Is it real, or did you verify that the words don't mean anything standard?
Coming up with a made up word will not solve this problem. If the word describes the content of the author's stories then there will be sensory experiences that a reader can expect when reading those stories.
I think the idea is that the hypothetical teacher is making students memorize passwords instead of teaching the meaning of the concept.
post-catalytic
psycho-elemental
anti-ludic
anarcho-hegemonic
desublimational
"Cogno-intellectual" was the catchphrase for this when I was in school. See Abrahams et al.:
To see the word used spectacularly, check out this paper: www.es.ele.tue.nl/~tbasten/fun/rhetoric_logic.pdf
LW comments use the Markdown syntax.
Was that meant to be a link?
It was. I can't get the 'show help' menu to pop-up, so I feel frustratingly inept right now. :)
Put the text you want to display in square brackets, and the URL you want to go to in regular brackets. That should do it.
I don't think literature has any equivalent to metasyntactic variables. Still, placeholder names might help - perhaps they are examples of "post-kadigan" literature?
http://codepad.org/H6MaC84M
I think those might all be real terms.
I think most literature teachers I've had would ignore the question entirely and use all those terms anyway with whatever meaning they thought fits best.
Maybe you should reconsider picking on an entire field you know nothing about?
I'm not saying this to defend postmodernism, which I know almost nothing about, but to point out that the Sokal hoax is not really enough reason to reject an entire field (any more than the Bogdanov affair is for physics).
I'm pointing out that you're neglecting the virtues of curiosity and humility, at least.
And this is leaving aside that there is no particular reason for "post-utopian" to be a postmodern as opposed to modern term; categorizing writers into movements has been a standard tool of literary analysis for ages (unsurprisingly, since people love putting things into categories).
At this point, getting in cheap jabs at post-modernism and philosophy wherever possible is a well-honored LessWrong tradition. Can't let the Greens win!
I have no idea, I just interpreted it in an obvious way.
I share this interpretation, but I always figured in Eliezer's examples the hypothetical professor was so obsessed with passwords or sounding knowledgeable that they didn't bother to teach the meaning of 'post-utopian', and might even have forgotten it. Or they were teaching to the test, but if this is a college class there is no standard test, so they're following some kind of doubly-lost purpose.
Or it could be that the professor is passing down passwords they were taught as a student themselves. A word must have had some meaning when it was created, but if most people treat it as a password it won't constrain their expectations.
Also, I like that the comment system correctly interpreted my use of underbars to mean italics. I've been using that convention in plaintext for 15 years or so, glad to see someone agrees with it!