“Out of an abundance of caution” – An overused phrase (2015)
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Upon reflection in the car, I literally have no idea what information they're trying to convey via its use. It seems obviously defined on its face, but problematically lacking when one tries to characterize it in detail.
Are you saying it's bad? Wrong? Unjust? I have no idea!
At one point it was useful for some specific cases (like all such words) but the nature of it being vague meant you could throw it around aimlessly ... and it lost meaning quickly.
It happens with a lot of new phrases and words that seem to carry with them some depth and such and they are quickly abused to the point of losing all meaning and context.
(Entry 1 of 2)
1a : posing a problem
It seems pretty simple to me.
Losing the big picture worldview it came from has buried the word's meaning.
It might be clear from the context what the wrongness might be, or it might be a gateway for more elaboration/discussion.
It seems like a perfectly fine construction to me, and a good example of the efficiency mentioned in the grandparent comment.
With this context, saying something is problematic is saying there a problem there in the sense that it could be improved to something more moral, just, kind, etc. Of course, just like most of these similar words its broad and abstract, and if you are ever confused why someone considers something problematic you can ask or independently learn or study the issues.
As far as actual usage as a word, I've seen a few common useful ones. - As an initial statement prior to explaining the actual details and reasoning. Hopefully this one is not confusing people, but often people dont read past a headline so... - A categorization of something specifically to be avoided in discussion for simplicity. You discuss or explain a simplified idea, and leave the problematic bits out til later, as a method of organizing, like when learning math or whatever. - Casual shorthand between people with a similar set of understanding and arguments to point something out. This unfortunately leaks out to people who dont share in that common terminology and get confused. Its unfortunate that instead of, say, getting curious to understand the missing pieces of arguments, some people seem to just assume it's some kind of fluff and dismiss it out of hand.
Hopefully something here can provide clarity of terminology for some, and if they still want to problematize problematic can clarify in what way and why.
"The author's approach towards female characters is problematic, but what I really want to focus on is..."
Calling something 'problematic' doesn't in any way prevent you from providing a justification for that view. If people aren't providing justifications when they should, then that's a problem independent of the particular choice of words.
Nor does any libelous or slandering statement or outright lying, but that doesn't remove your responsibility of supporting and substantiating your claims.
The "problematic" label is just a trick to poison the well.
One of my favorite "problems" is based on the "fact" that everything we see in media becomes a transcendental reality that nobody can evade, thus we have to constantly fight over who gets represented and why and how. Of course the premise has massive holes in it, and the representation being fought over is often unimaginative clunky stuff churned out by a committee. But that's not problematic.
So whenever I see the word "problematic" I think of some bureaucratic middle manager looking over a memo from above dictating that he or she is required to enforce a policy directive.
Source: Am queer and read this kind of stuff all the time.
It's like "alleged" only there's always an "alleged <something>", while "problematic" is only ever used alone.
IMHO it's overused, because of its distinct lack of clarity. It's especially incorrect when the reporter is injecting it themselves, as opposed to reporting what some other person said.
The other phrase that gets my goat is "for your convenience and safety". When I hear that, my first thought is it will be something inconvenient that doesn't improve my safety.
You could combine these two phrases!
"Out of an abundance of caution, we now require you to $SOMETHING for your convenience and safety."
I always assume they mean "for our convenience and safety".
If you estimated the risk of something as fairly low probability but with a large impact: out of "an abundance of caution" is highly warranted. I would think getting your flu shot each year would qualify saying that.
https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
Such a pedantic concept of ethics means nobody can do any good.
Here’s an example from Chick-fil-A in my inbox: “We’ve instructed anyone who is not feeling well to stay home out of an abundance of caution...”
That’s not an abundance of caution, for crying out loud! That’s the absolute minimum anybody should be doing in response. It’s likely far too measured.
Think you just have the common cold and won't be doing any harm by going out like normal? Well... out of an abundance of caution, stay home anyway.
Your point is well taken that this is probably the least anybody could be doing, but nonetheless, the actual actions being taken and the end result seems to be positive, which is far more important than the language behind it, IMO.
This Freakonomics podcast was what made me aware of it consciously. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/thats-a-great-question-a-ne...
I genuinely only use it if the question is good enough to get me questioning my self.
Was that the origin, or was it in use before that?
https://books.google.com/books?id=4zJWAAAAYAAJ&newbks=1&newb...
As for the whole "risks" thing, some random administrator at a school has zero clue what the real risks are at this point, let alone even medical professionals who only know of confirmed cases.
This is unknown territory for everyone using that phrase and I'm not sure anyone knows what will happen in a day, two days, a week.
It seems like a tall order to ask people to " But let’s be honest with ourselves and others about the risks we face and act accordingly, rather than out of an abundance of caution. " when they don't know the risks seems like a loop right back to "an abundance of caution".
I think it is more, they just don't know / there isn't good data for them.
"thank you for your anticipated cooperation"
Raise that with a "We apologise for the inconvenience".
The complex changed hands and the new complex management was in the habit of closing with that remark. We took it as a sign and moved.
- "In light of recent events"
- "Due to unforeseen circumstances"
- "It has become necessary"
Am I missing any?
"Look we don't want to go into the specifics of what did or didn't happen and hell we might not even know .... but here's the bad news...".
Why not thank me now?
A silly one, for example: https://www.armywriter.com/NCOER/bmw.pdf
It also touches on when not to use passive voice. :)
Apologies for possibly being pedantic, but I do think this is necessary to point out. A lot of people seem to think that "passive" refers to statements that are vague about agency, or often something else vaguely along those lines. But active-vs-passive has nothing to do with that!
Now one could say, well, that's just not how people are using the word "passive" these days; but the thing is, I don't think whatever notion people are trying to express via "passive" is a useful one. Sometimes it means "vague about who's responsible", but often it doesn't; I don't think there's a useful notion worth salvaging in there.
Anyway for way more on this you can see Geoff Pullum's article on it[1], or the whole "passives" category[2] on Language Log...
Would you have them say something like, "given the risk of inaction causing an incremental 2% infection cases among our customer population, we judged that imposing an added cost of $5 per employee and customer was a reasonable choice"?
I suspect "vehicle" (and perhaps even "high rate of speed") might be frequently used by law enforcement because those are the same terms used in the statutory laws they are enforcing.
If you say “he was driving too fast”, “or he was speeding” that’s potentially a subjective assessment.