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Comment by istorical | Hacker News Reader

Probably because self-ascribed 'rationalism' can potentially come across a bit self-aggrandizing. Like calling oneself part of the 'patriot' party (which implicitly implies members of other political groups aren't patriotic).

Not that I have a problem with SSC, I think it's a cool blog.

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Do you have a problem with the “democrat” party implying that other parties aren’t democratic?

At this point it's pretty common for self-identifying lesswrong-style rationalists to use quote marks, or add a bunch of qualifiers. Weird nerdy people get a lot of hate, there are whole subreddits devoted to hating on "rationalists" for a variety of reasons. Adding quotes tends to calm those people down, and make them a bit less hateful.

Really it's not derisive, it's self defense.

> Do you have a problem with the “democrat” party

Its called the “Democratic Party”, and it is a proper noun, which distinguishes it visiually form the common use of “democratic”.

While some people get upset about it, "Democrat" is useful to differentiate the two verbally. Obviously capitalization isn't possible.

Obama's team launched https://democrats.org/ in 2009 or so. I really think people shouldn't get upset over "Democrat".

“Democrat” is the singular noun form, “Democrats” is the plural noun form, “Democratic” is the adjective form, and “Democrat”-as-adjective is the “signal that the speaker is a hostile partisan" form. They are all useful distinctions.

> While some people get upset about it, "Democrat" is useful to differentiate the two verbally. Obviously capitalization isn't possible.

Not really. "Democrat Party" is literally just a shibboleth used by opposing partisans who are upset that "democratic" is an adjective with positive associations. Everything else is just a post-hoc rationalization.

You think that because a) you don't know the origin of the intentionally incorrect usage of "Democrat" as an adjective, and b) you're confused about the difference between an adjective and a noun.

The usage in that domain name is as a noun. "Joe is a Democrat" is fine. That's a noun. "Democrat politicians" is not fine. That's an adjective.

I would note the pattern is not unique to "Democrat/Democratic"; it is used to turn other descriptors into slurs. Cf. "Jewish" vs. "Jew" as adjectives.

Yes, and I'd certainly try to distinguish whether I meant the specific party or the general concept (either by putting it in quotes or using a capital letter).

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