[ExI] need a new word/suffix

Anders Sandberg anders at aleph.se
Tue Jan 12 10:44:51 UTC 2016


On 2016-01-12 08:49, Brian Manning Delaney wrote:
>
> The problem is that one would run into an overwhelming PC Police 
> response in any attempt to create new words that separate hatred from 
> fear, since the prevailing view is that all fear of Others is, at 
> bottom, hatred (also, and originally of course, though less relevant 
> these days: all hatred is fear -- indeed, a pathological fear).

Haha! If you actually did get that response you would be set. There is 
nothing like having people explicitly condemn a neologism to make it 
spread.

Case in point: the new pronoun "hen" in Swedish. Constructed to mean 
"he/she", introduced in a children's book. The combination of gender 
equality, children, and language made it the great topic of arguments 
back in 2011 - political correctness gone mad! Most people groaned about 
it... and now it is used unironically by most, including media.

http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/04/linguistic-social-engineering/

The thing is, controversy is just a way of exposing a new word to a lot 
of people. If it has the right properties it will spread. At most 
opponents can try to give the word associations that are off-putting.

-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University




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