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Nornagest comments on Do we underuse the genetic heuristic? - Less Wrong
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Comments (18)
It's confusing in English too.
The word derives from the Greek γένεσις or genesis, i.e. origin; Wikipedia informs me that it dates from the mid-1930s, not long after genetics in the sense of "study of inheritance" was established as a field (and well before Watson and Crick). Almost certainly the coiners of "genetic heuristic", "genetics", and "gene" were all gesturing toward the same concept; we can hardly blame them for failing to anticipate the changes that bioinformatic ideas would lead to.
History might explain how the name came about, but it doesn't prevent us from changing it to be better accessible. Especially when we argue that it might be underused it might need a better name.
I think catchy and intuitive terms are important, so I'd be perfectly willing to change terminology. The only problem is that people usually do use terms such "genetic fallacy" or "ad homimen arguments", and there is a certain value to sticking to conventions, too.
Your article doesn't use the term "genetic fallacy" a single time so to the extend that there a convention that suggest to use the term you are already breaking it.
There is such a convention: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy
I didn't break that convention, since I didn't use any other term for "genetic fallacy" (I didn't use the concept directly, though I did speak of it indirectly by pointing out that genetic arguments are often thought to be fallacious).
But like I said, I'd consider using another term if a catchy one would be invented.
As far as I can see you did invent the term "genetic heuristic". If you google it with quotes on the first 10 search results there's your article and a bunch of articles on genetic algorithms. If what you are arguing has something to do with the way the term is used in talking about genetic algorithms, that connection isn't apparent to me.
As I said above, when you say origin heuristic, I think it would be clear what's meant and it would be harder to get false ideas about what you mean. Wikipedia even lists fallacy or orgins as synonym for genetic fallacy so it not that you would invent more new vocubulary than you are already doing.
Hal Finney invented the term "genetic heuristic" here at Less Wrong...but it is true that it isn't a standard term (like "the genetic fallacy" is).
I'm not a native English speaker either so my linguistic sensitivity isn't the best. Is "origin heuristic" optimal? I'm thinking it might be good if the term included something about "person" or "speaker" since that makes it clear that you're attacking or supporting the speaker's reliability (rather than the proposition itself). Of course "ad hominem" does this but then again there is a case against using latin terms that people don't understand.
Sorry, that I charged the wrong person of LW ;)
If I say something it's wrong because it's the party line of the Republican party, I'm not addressing a single person or speaker. I think "origin heuristic" covers that claim quite well.
Do you have a motivation of why would want to be more specific and not include groups, movements and other sources of ideas from which a idea can originate but which are no persons?
My only objection to "the origin heuristic" is that it might not be sufficiently catchy and intuitive, since it's pretty abstract. That's why I thought something to do with "person" might be preferable. Something to do with "source" is another alternative.