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XiXiDu comments on Video Q&A with Singularity Institute Executive Director - Less Wrong Discussion

42 Post author: lukeprog 10 December 2011 11:27AM

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Comment author: XiXiDu 11 December 2011 11:44:56AM 4 points [-]

It's also not the case that contractions/acronyms always eliminate "the": consider working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and working for the FBI.

Yes, it would never have occured to me that "the FBI" could be wrong.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 11 December 2011 04:54:56PM 2 points [-]

There are a lot of these. On ten seconds' thought, I would complete "working for..." with: the FBI
the CIA
the NFL
the AMA
the ADA (which isn't an organization, but can still be an employer)

Using a definite article implies syntactically that the referent is uniquely referenced; it wouldn't surprise me if there was an implicit status claim there, and if the resulting status negotiation was contributing to the (IMHO otherwise entirely unjustified) heat with which this nomenclature issue is being discussed/voted on here.

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