If you don’t use proper nomenclature or explain what is meant in detail you have no hope of truly being understood. People’s ignorance of what things actually mean is used as a weapon against further understanding, like the good old fashioned “socialism is when the government does stuff and is also evil and any hint of it will introduce satan” or whatever
Being hostile towards proper understanding of a subject is not going to help you actually comprehend it
First, you can cut out a third of the words in a sentence and still comprehend the gist of the message. ‘Proper nomenclature’ might be important in a college essay or a legal writ but in the real world people slur their words and mishear the replies and still manage to get the point across. Words aren’t numbers; any word can have a dozen different meanings.
Look at former NYC Mayor LaGuardia. Back in the day he ran on a Fusion Ticket that included Socialists, Communists, and Republicans? You could spent a lifetime trying to sort out the exact definition of what he was. Do you think Nazi Germany was ‘Socialist’ because of National Socialism.
Second, how much comprehension is actually needed? Do you need to understand the difference between alternating current and direct current to know when to use batteries and when to plug a device into the wall? Do I have to understand aerodynamics to buy an airline ticket? Does someone have to know every single position a candidate holds in order to decide to vote for them?
But that’s the issue, I disagree that “we manage to get the point across”. A lot of the times we simply don’t
Do you think Nazi Germany was ‘Socialist’ because of National Socialism
And you bring up a great point here, about why it matters to have proper understanding of terms. Otherwise you’d be likely to lump in Nazism in with socialist ideologies. And that has happened a lot. People have used this exact line of reasoning to demonize socialism
This website might not be a college essay, but it is a forum, where ideally you go to to see different perspectives and learn something about something. So I think this discussion perfectly fits here, why should you limit gaining knowledge to an essay or legal writ? There’s no rush to get your point across
As for the rest, no you do not need to know the specific differences between AC or DC… but you better know there is a difference, lest you’ll blow a device up if you try to do anything non-standard (like, say, plugging a computer up to a backup power supply. You need to make sure it’s an UPS that outputs a proper sine wave, lest things will go wrong with your PC’s PSU expecting one, but getting a DC input instead). And you might not need to know every single detail of you candidate… but I hope you do actually know what their positions are, yes
So, you agree with me 99% but will fight to the death over the last 1%?
Let’s take your last paragraph. There are plenty of kids who can hook up the PC, a video game console, and Grandma’s VCR and make them all work together without having the least idea of why it works. They know that this plug goes here and not there and that’s enough for them. None of them can tell a sine wave from a tsunami.
And you completely ignored LaGuardia being able to be a Communist and a Republican at the same time. He happily ignored the contradiction and got both to agree that he was the best man for the job.
I ignored it because I’m not American and I had no idea what you were referencing, sorry. I got my own qualms with American terminologies but that’s a different discussion
So, you couldn’t be bothered to take 30 seconds to search for something I mentioned, but I am supposed to fall in line and accept all your definitions and points of view?
First, now you’re trying to move the goal posts. If you didn’t know who LaGuardia was you should have mentioned it right away.
Second, let’s jump to your latest comment and start from there.
If LaGuardia is irrelevant to the current situation, why is Marx relevant? He’s been dead longer than Fiorello.
You’re the one demanding we use antique terms, and chastising me for trying to update them.
Finally, everything you’ve posted has proved my first point, that there are people on the Left who will argue and argue instead of trying to build consensus
And so, okay, instead of discussing like this, or rather arguing, I want us to take a step back and ask, “what is it that we’re actually trying to achieve here?”
Is the goal to “win” the argument? Is the goal to look at a different perspective? This isn’t a debate club, there is nothing to gain here, except our personal knowledge or understanding of something
And so, on that note, you said how this is exactly how leftists shoot themselves in the foot with arguments like this, but like, who is trying to argue here? And for whom? As far as I can tell, you are the one trying to win some argument, I’m just trying to have a discussion about terms in a, presumably, left-leaning environment where we’re all already roughly on the same page. From an external point of view, what people see is you mostly going off on others
When you say I’m chastising you, that’s literally your imagination, it’s not what I’m trying to do at all. So please don’t put words in my mouth, okay?
The point others were trying to make, is that it’s useful to talk about the working vs the owning class. And I further tried to get across that it’s useful to have this sort of knowledge, and that using terms loosely isn’t helpful for one’s understanding of a topic. This is something that I speak from personal experience. It’s basically just an argument for political literacy
But if I didn’t get that across properly, then I apologize. I could have spent a bit more time explaining myself
If you don’t use proper nomenclature or explain what is meant in detail you have no hope of truly being understood. People’s ignorance of what things actually mean is used as a weapon against further understanding, like the good old fashioned “socialism is when the government does stuff and is also evil and any hint of it will introduce satan” or whatever
Being hostile towards proper understanding of a subject is not going to help you actually comprehend it
Two points.
First, you can cut out a third of the words in a sentence and still comprehend the gist of the message. ‘Proper nomenclature’ might be important in a college essay or a legal writ but in the real world people slur their words and mishear the replies and still manage to get the point across. Words aren’t numbers; any word can have a dozen different meanings.
Look at former NYC Mayor LaGuardia. Back in the day he ran on a Fusion Ticket that included Socialists, Communists, and Republicans? You could spent a lifetime trying to sort out the exact definition of what he was. Do you think Nazi Germany was ‘Socialist’ because of National Socialism.
Second, how much comprehension is actually needed? Do you need to understand the difference between alternating current and direct current to know when to use batteries and when to plug a device into the wall? Do I have to understand aerodynamics to buy an airline ticket? Does someone have to know every single position a candidate holds in order to decide to vote for them?
But that’s the issue, I disagree that “we manage to get the point across”. A lot of the times we simply don’t
And you bring up a great point here, about why it matters to have proper understanding of terms. Otherwise you’d be likely to lump in Nazism in with socialist ideologies. And that has happened a lot. People have used this exact line of reasoning to demonize socialism
This website might not be a college essay, but it is a forum, where ideally you go to to see different perspectives and learn something about something. So I think this discussion perfectly fits here, why should you limit gaining knowledge to an essay or legal writ? There’s no rush to get your point across
As for the rest, no you do not need to know the specific differences between AC or DC… but you better know there is a difference, lest you’ll blow a device up if you try to do anything non-standard (like, say, plugging a computer up to a backup power supply. You need to make sure it’s an UPS that outputs a proper sine wave, lest things will go wrong with your PC’s PSU expecting one, but getting a DC input instead). And you might not need to know every single detail of you candidate… but I hope you do actually know what their positions are, yes
So, you agree with me 99% but will fight to the death over the last 1%?
Let’s take your last paragraph. There are plenty of kids who can hook up the PC, a video game console, and Grandma’s VCR and make them all work together without having the least idea of why it works. They know that this plug goes here and not there and that’s enough for them. None of them can tell a sine wave from a tsunami.
And you completely ignored LaGuardia being able to be a Communist and a Republican at the same time. He happily ignored the contradiction and got both to agree that he was the best man for the job.
I ignored it because I’m not American and I had no idea what you were referencing, sorry. I got my own qualms with American terminologies but that’s a different discussion
So, you couldn’t be bothered to take 30 seconds to search for something I mentioned, but I am supposed to fall in line and accept all your definitions and points of view?
That’s pretty funny.
Fine, let’s play your game
A mayor from almost 100 years ago is irrelevant to this discussion. I don’t know about you, but I was talking about contemporary times here
Is this really how you wanna discuss?
First, now you’re trying to move the goal posts. If you didn’t know who LaGuardia was you should have mentioned it right away.
Second, let’s jump to your latest comment and start from there.
If LaGuardia is irrelevant to the current situation, why is Marx relevant? He’s been dead longer than Fiorello.
You’re the one demanding we use antique terms, and chastising me for trying to update them.
Finally, everything you’ve posted has proved my first point, that there are people on the Left who will argue and argue instead of trying to build consensus
And so, okay, instead of discussing like this, or rather arguing, I want us to take a step back and ask, “what is it that we’re actually trying to achieve here?”
Is the goal to “win” the argument? Is the goal to look at a different perspective? This isn’t a debate club, there is nothing to gain here, except our personal knowledge or understanding of something
And so, on that note, you said how this is exactly how leftists shoot themselves in the foot with arguments like this, but like, who is trying to argue here? And for whom? As far as I can tell, you are the one trying to win some argument, I’m just trying to have a discussion about terms in a, presumably, left-leaning environment where we’re all already roughly on the same page. From an external point of view, what people see is you mostly going off on others
When you say I’m chastising you, that’s literally your imagination, it’s not what I’m trying to do at all. So please don’t put words in my mouth, okay?
The point others were trying to make, is that it’s useful to talk about the working vs the owning class. And I further tried to get across that it’s useful to have this sort of knowledge, and that using terms loosely isn’t helpful for one’s understanding of a topic. This is something that I speak from personal experience. It’s basically just an argument for political literacy
But if I didn’t get that across properly, then I apologize. I could have spent a bit more time explaining myself