Comment author: AdeleneDawner 04 May 2011 03:23:34AM 1 point [-]

No matter what verbal habits you get into, you're going to prefer to be able to walk rather than hobble, to see rather than to not see, etc.

Those are common preferences, but not universal. Deaf people as a group/culture have a bit of a reputation in this area, for one, and then there's transabled people...

Not that that's really the point of avoiding the language. The point of avoiding the language is more along the lines of avoiding reinforcing the meme that people with those traits are less valuable and can be ignored when making plans. (Example, though a weak one. For a more concrete one: How accessible is your area? Try to go a day without using any stairs except the ones in your home, including e.g. stepping down off a sidewalk.)

Comment author: Marius 05 May 2011 04:01:10PM 0 points [-]

Its true that there are no universal preferences, but ability is about as universal as you can get. The deaf community doesn't prefer deafness to hearing, they just like having a community. If they genuinely preferred deafness to hearing they'd advocate destroying their hearing infants' eardrums... but in fact they find that idea abhorrent. The existence of transabled has nothing to do with preferences, only with identity. The only major groups that prefer disability to ability are the practitioners of female genital mutilation... and their attitudes toward sexuality are pretty disordered.

I certainly agree that its important to avoid treating the disabled as having lower value as people but I don't see how calling situations lame makes me devalue lame people and see them as a disability rather than as a person. I also don't know what that has to do with sidewalk ramps. Surely that has more to do with efficient resourse allocation vs a desire to increase inclusivity... I don't think the proper balance is obvious at all.

Now I certainly agree its important to value disabled people just like abled

Comment author: CuSithBell 03 May 2011 09:43:50PM 1 point [-]

I was under the impression it had a meaning like "coerce [by means of gifts]", but apparently it's closer to "supply". As such, I 'lost' the word that I thought it was.

I have an inkling that the meaning I thought it had is a connotation, but I'm not certain. How have you seen it used?

Comment author: Marius 03 May 2011 09:50:44PM 2 points [-]

I think there is a connotation that one is supplying the person for ulterior/underhanded motives. I would ply a politician with hookers to get a law changed, or ply a source with alcohol so that I can ask him questions with less resistance... but plying customers with apples in exchange for fair market value just sounds weird.

Comment author: CuSithBell 03 May 2011 09:18:50PM 0 points [-]

I'm glad! I don't like losing vocabulary (I was sad when I lost "ply", and am still conflicted over the word's correct meaning).

Also: that's a brilliant entry you've linked to there, and I'll have to toss it around in my brain a bit. Thanks!

Comment author: Marius 03 May 2011 09:24:10PM 1 point [-]

Why did you lose ply?

Comment author: SilasBarta 03 May 2011 09:10:00PM *  1 point [-]

Yes, this was the basis for a Jerry Seinfeld comedy routine: "We need to have a pre-gym, a gym-before-the-gym. A place where you can get yourself fit enough to be comfortable going to the regular gym." (And this actually isn't far from the reason for the success of the franchise Curves.)

I was strongly voted up a while back for making the above point and then suggesting we have the analog website for LessWrong -- a place where people can learn and discuss this stuff without being intimindated by those who know more.

Comment author: Marius 03 May 2011 09:12:52PM -2 points [-]

If only the users of Curves graduated to regular gyms more frequently...

Comment author: [deleted] 03 May 2011 08:19:59PM 3 points [-]

I'm half convinced. However, I keep reading that inactivity is unhealthy regardless of whether it is fattening. Therefore fat people have good reason to try to resist the tendency to inactivity induced in them by their fatness.

So: why are fat people inactive? My only tentative guess is that it is difficult for them to move their bodies, and they respond to the difficulty by moving less. This suggests the following possible remedy: strength training. With stronger muscles, your body feels like less of a burden, and so you are more likely to move around.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Bayesians vs. Barbarians
Comment author: Marius 03 May 2011 09:03:57PM *  0 points [-]

The study (which needs significant followup to create usable results) could have a number of interpretations, including:

*conclusions not fully supported by the data

*obesity leads to less enjoyment of motion

*obesity leads to fewer social opportunities to engage in sports

*low socio-economic status leads to obesity and to inactivity (due to insufficient access to parks, to parents who force you out of the house, etc).

*People don't record their activity levels every day, so their estimates are colored more by measurable factors (body weight) than by unmeasurable ones (how much they actually moved).

I'd hesitate to read too much into this study.

Comment author: CuSithBell 03 May 2011 08:41:07PM *  1 point [-]

The general idea is - don't use [(non-value-judgment) terms that describe certain types of people] as value judgments. Trivial examples are: "bad" is okay, if somewhat anemic (!!! Wait, is that offensive? I'll leave it in in case anyone wants to address that question), because it's not identifying any particular group as "bad" except... "bad people". "Gay" should be discouraged, because it's basically saying "people who are gay are bad, so I am calling you gay to indicate that you are bad".

Comment author: Marius 03 May 2011 08:58:03PM 1 point [-]

While this doesn't fully justify the use of words like "lame", "blindly," or "retarded" to refer to actions, they are in a different class than using words like "gay" or "N-----". People are ableist, and that's not about to change on account of language. No matter what verbal habits you get into, you're going to prefer to be able to walk rather than hobble, to see rather than to not see, etc.

In contrast, sexual orientation and skin pigmentation are not inherently sources of value. Considering gay an equally good situation to straight, or dark skin pigmentation an equally good situation to light skin pigmentation is very reasonable. If we avoid calling bad events "gay", we can more easily achieve equality there.

Comment author: David_Gerard 30 April 2011 02:30:19PM *  1 point [-]

I'd expect something like (a): get experts to say whether the articles constitute a reasonable survey of the field. We'd probably need (d) as well, because the way I just defined (a) is one definition of a good neutral Wikipedia article.

Is Britannica trying specifically for neutrality? It claims authority (whereas Wikipedia explicitly claims none which is why we're so obsessive about references), but I'm not sure it kowtows to such culturally relativistic notions as "neutral". The Wikipedia article on Britannica notes that EB has been lauded as increasingly less biased with time, but then Wikipedia would note that. Glancing at britannica.com, I can't find a claim as to what it represents editorially except that it's Britannica, you know, Britannica, so I'm not sure what would be a fair test to them.

This is getting wildly off topic ... I suppose it's vaguely related to politics by reframing while trying to be aware of and flag the reframings so as to avoid mind-killing ... this is the sort of thing my autodidact's knowledge of postmodernism comes in handy for.

Comment author: Marius 30 April 2011 09:54:24PM 2 points [-]

I wouldn't mind "ask experts who do not post to Wikipedia or write for Britannica" to rate the articles for accuracy, neutrality, etc. I would expect them to call Wikipedia more comprehensive, to call Britannica more neutral, and I have no idea which would be rated more accurate. If they did indeed call the Wikipedia articles more neutral, I'd have to update my understanding of the field.

My experience: I fixed mistakes in two articles, then got thoroughly distressed and stopped participating. I'm an anesthesiologist, as background. The first article was on a painkiller, and I found my changes overwritten by a drug enthusiast who believes/writes that narcotics are non-addictive. I did not push the issue. The second article was on anesthesia, and I linked to a reference document published by the American Society of Anesthesiologists (the premier research organization of anesthesiologists in the US.) A nurse anesthetist editor was very proud of his ability to prevent any documents from the ASA from being linked to on the page while maintaining a link to the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists, and made it clear that it was his "turf" and that he was highly political. I did persist briefly to see what would happen: he tracked my real identity and threatened me. I immediately lost all interest.

I don't believe Britannica is trying for neutrality per se. I believe it's trying for objectivity, which is related but nonidentical. On many topics wikipedia attempts objectivity as well rather than neutrality (evolution vs intelligent design, for instance).

Comment author: David_Gerard 30 April 2011 10:58:33AM *  0 points [-]

This is surmise when the material for the test is available. Factual accuracy has been compared more than once between Wikipedia and Britannica - has anyone attempted to compare neutrality? How would we actually do this? I suspect no-one has as yet, but it's one I'd quite like to see if we can interest a third party in doing!

(Old editions of Britannica are notoriously bad for this, by the way. They were written to quite definitely inculcate a given cultural viewpoint and are loaded with opinion. This was a major problem in seeding Wikipedia with 1911 Britannica material in the early days - the stuff just didn't pass NPOV muster. I would be unsurprised if more recent editions did much better; Wikipedia's notion of NPOV is really obviously a current cultural construct.)

Comment author: Marius 30 April 2011 01:39:09PM 3 points [-]

Well, to compare neutrality we can do one of four things: a: rely on the impressions of people who've used both (survey people who've claimed to have read both) b: trace the prior likelihood of either group of authors being biased on the material they're writing about (the profit motive vs writing about what you're passionate about) c: ask contributors what they've seen done that damages the neutral point of view d: come up with a neutral definition of neutrality.

It sounds like you want to do d: how might we start on such a thing?

Oh, and obviously yeah - "neutral" will depend on your culture. Objectivity might or might not, but neutrality must. So this makes d trickier.

Comment author: David_Gerard 30 April 2011 11:08:45AM *  1 point [-]

I think I really meant it did it much better than pretty much anything on the web. Which I suppose isn't saying much, but I think it's saying more than nothing - Britannica is a culturally reified gold standard that approximately no-one actually cracks open past high school; Wikipedia is something ordinary people use every day when they just would not have used a paper encyclopedia.

Though, of course, Wikipedia calls itself an encyclopedia and has always looked up to Britannica. As I note below, it would be interesting to actually compare the neutrality of current Wikipedia with current Britannica.

Comment author: Marius 30 April 2011 01:28:28PM 3 points [-]

Oh, I certainly agree with this. I'd just trace it back to Wikipedia's roots - and I suspect that as fewer people are familiar with Britannica, Wikipedia will lose that more and more.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 30 April 2011 01:41:47AM *  2 points [-]

I'm under the impression that most encyclopedias had articles written by a single author, chosen as an expert on the subject. As such, the article on "Christianity" would be written by a renowned Christian theologian, or historian of Christendom; with no contribution by (for instance) any Muslims, Buddhists, neopagans, or atheists. While the author would be expected not to come across as overtly partisan, there's not necessarily any correction for biases inherent in that author's point of view.

This is a different approach from Wikipedia's NPOV, where work on an article is expected to converge towards a point where contributors from multiple points of view find it equitable. Wikipedia doesn't demand that any given editor write a fair treatment of the POV opposing her own (although "writing for the enemy" is offered as an ideal); rather, she's merely expected to work with other editors from different points of view toward a common goal of a good consensus article.

One of the controversies surrounding Wikipedia is that it demands that experts submit to the NPOV policy and to having their work edited by non-experts as well — rather than asking other editors to defer to their expertise. This is in contrast with competing projects Nupedia (now defunct), Citizendium, and Knol, which propose to attract expert editors by giving them a greater voice.

Comment author: Marius 30 April 2011 03:34:55AM *  0 points [-]

Britannica authors, for instance, are Britannica authors first and moneymakers second and opinionated people third or fourth. Wikipedia authors are highly opinionated, and are compromising (which fixes some objectivity problems but is a poor substitute for objectivity or neutrality). So the Britannica author is likely to be less expert than the sum of wikipedia authors but much more neutral.

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