bbleeker comments on A Parable of Elites and Takeoffs - Less Wrong

23 Post author: gwern 30 June 2014 11:04PM

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Comment author: bbleeker 01 July 2014 11:47:38AM 1 point [-]

So that's where the N comes from! I was wondering why it was Nacirema instead of Acirema.

Comment author: gwern 01 July 2014 03:48:33PM 6 points [-]

I think at least part of it is that 'Acirema' is way more recognizable as a variant on 'America' than is 'Nacirema'. The 'N' is a major decoy, while 'Acirema' has the same word shape ("The theory holds that a novel bouma shape created by changing the lower-case letters to upper-case hinders a person’s recall ability.")