Hacker News Reader

Comment by drak0n1c | Hacker News Reader

Idiot, stupid, moron, immature -- these terms are all much the same as retard in their origin as a neutral clinical label. These were terms referring to impairments that patients often had through no fault of their own. Why are some of those words still acceptably used negatively in a serious fashion, while others are taboo to be used even affectionately or in a neutral context?

Why is your deliberately negative label of "shit-for-brains" any better?

View on HN

Words change meaning, my dear egregious etymologist.

By that reasoning every nice woman is an ignorant queen. (Nice comes from latin "ne scius", and queen was the general word for woman)

EDIT: egregious also flipped it's meaning; I clearly meant the old meaning of "remarkably good"

You cannot just pick and choose. We live today and we understand each other based on a shared under ding of what words mean and what they are are "meant to mean". A veiled insult is still an insult, and there are places where it's inappropriate

By virtue of the fact that numerous people disagree with your assessment. Should it not be obvious that you could be living in your own private Idaho sharing a belief that all humans experience your gestalt. People have been finding ways to call both themselves and others mentally handicap since communication began. The irony of the current cultural dialogue is that the real negative experience of an expressive and living word is assumed to negate substantial positive aspects which are well documented by those of good humor and cheer. Your line of reasoning attempts to censure peers much as a child would demand of a playmate when in disagreement.

I think your mixing up two distinct points here:

a) whether it's ok or not to insult person A with terminology that currently insults group B as a side effect. (The topic here would be "to PC or not to PC, have we gone to far with it etc; which is a conversation that can and should be had)

b) whether it's ok, while discussing point "a" above, to insist that some words mean something else than what it's generally understand in good faith, in order to apply ineffective whataboutism ("what about idiot, it used to be a medical term!") to the conversation. To what goal? Claim that you can use "retard" because you can use "idiot"? Let's not play etymological games, if you want to discuss about PC overreach, discuss PC overreach; there are plenty of good arguments to be had against extreme political correctness and censure that don't involve having your readers rolling their eyes at blatant attempts to clutching at straws.

Words change meaning over time. They do not flip over in an instant.

What I believe we're seeing is a society-wide disagreement on the connotations of the word. It will shake itself out, one way or another - but this process used to take decades and was barely noticeable. Now it takes months to years, which is catching people by surprise.

Also: the flip side of "words change meaning" is that, during a period of change, you'll encounter people using a different meaning than you. The arguments favoring the updated weight of the word we're discussing here seem frequently of the form, "$word truly means $my-meaning; surely you do not really believe it means $your-meaning, you're just pretending, and in reality you're just a hateful person who hates $me and $mine" - which is essentially twisting logic and sanity into a pretzel.

(For better or worse, I expect the "revisionists" to win over "conservatives" here, now that the updated connotations have institutional backing of big social media companies, in form of the ban policies.)

I think you're right, society is not homogeneous and language does evolve differently in different niches. Usually this can be observed in smaller groups, which have a strong pressure to "code switch" the dominant language of the society where they live. Minority group members do this all the time, all over the world; often there is a continuum of language/dialect/register that speakers navigate throughout their daily lives.

What's peculiar here is that american society has become polarized, on a rough 50/50% split, along certain cultural norms that affect a small part of language.

Members of group A will not easily concede "code switching" to the vocabulary that is ok for group B because group be is not clearly the majority dominant group.

In this case it's easy, since the word has alternatives, so a member of group A doesn't have to code switch to group-B-speak and say "retard" instead of "idiot".

Furthermore some vocal members of group A will demand that members of group B refrain from using that word on the same ground (there is an easy alternative).

You may be rightfully annoyed that group A is dictating something to you, dear group B member. A meager consolation is that there many minorities in the world that know how you feel (although some may not identify you as a minority since you're not; but that's beside the point, that's how it feels to be one).

Culture is complicated.

Where I live there is a big chunk of local culture that uses blasphemy as casual filler words. Other areas of the country, and a sizeable chunk of the same region, find that utterly repugnant and it cannot be used in polite speech (e.g. people are fired for saying "porco Dio" on television). Locals here just know it when it's ok to use it and when it's not a good idea. Some insist they should be free to stay whatever they want, and "porco Dio" they may well be right! A famous local nobel prize winner (Margherita Hack), when asked "do you use blasphemy in casual speech?" answered "sure, I'm from Tuscany!". I myself fit well in the that local culture.

That said, do I still talk like that when my 4yo child is around? No! I don't want him to talk like that until he can control himself and read the room! Is fixing this bug in the society (the rule against insulting the christian God) a hill I want to die on? Why should I? It's just a word, a fun habit, would it be rational for me to yell at people that I'm free to insult their gods because if freedom of speech or whatever? I'd be looked at as a crazy man because that's what I'd be.

To me people who cling their freedom to utter words that a significant portion of their fellow compatriots find offensive, look exactly like that. Picking a silly battle, and entrenching themselves.

Thanks for elaborating. I mostly agree with what you're saying here (and thanks for including a local example!). That said, I think the following isn't the correct portrayal of the situation:

> To me people who cling their freedom to utter words that a significant portion of their fellow compatriots find offensive, look exactly like that. Picking a silly battle, and entrenching themselves.

We're not talking about people who "cling to their freedom" to say what they want to everyone. We're dealing with a group that used language allowed by its local culture, that suddenly got in the spotlight, and now the rest of the world is trying to pressure them into conforming to the norms used elsewhere. To riff of your example, it's like the wide world suddenly noticed Tuscany is a place, and decided to condemn people living there for insulting the Christian god on a regular basis.

I mention this point because, in my observation, this was a common pattern in on-line communities, particularly around forceful introduction of Codes of Conduct. Outsiders would enter a niche community, take public offense at the local language norms, mobilize a wider Internet crowd, and force the community to change their norms under threat of heaps of negative publicity. To me, this kind of behavior reeks of... colonialism.

That would make sense if communities are indeed isolated and want to stay as such. To continue with our little analogy: while Tuscany (and a few other places) have this peculiar cultural trait, it's as still home for a lot of people who don't recognize themselves in that and they also belong there and need to be respected. Very often that's even the numeric majority of people.

"my grandfather and my father and I all cursed God for breakfast for three generations and now I suddenly have to talk like what this pope-kissing bigots want me to?" ignores that there are pope-kissing bigots in your society, your neighbor may be one, your friendly policemen may be well one, the old man across the street.

But also, there are people who are not pope-kissing bigots and YET behave themselves in a way to not saw division. Your children's school teacher may be one, perhaps cursing in the privacy of her home but giving you a look you if your children talk like little fallen angels.

We're all used to norms. I don't think that's the root cause of us having this conversation in the first place.

There is a group of people who is feeling their position in society has changed under their feet and they are frustrated about that. For them these topics become an identity-glue, something to hold on and to tell their ingroup from outgroups.

But there are also people who just don't like norms and just by coincidence happen to be aligned with whoever is the norm-breaker du jour.

> Why is your deliberately negative label of "shit-for-brains" any better?

It doesn't have as rich a history being used as a slur against people with intellectual disabilities.

Also, I was pretty mad. Even if we determine I am a hypocrite that doesn't necessarily make me wrong.

It isn’t that backwards? Retard isn’t a slur against against people with intellectual disabilities, it is a neutral description of people with intellectual disabilities, used to slur your buddy who said something dumb.

> It doesn't have as rich a history being used as a slur

"Queer" does. And people use it today.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com