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Comment by smallerfish | Hacker News Reader

"underdevelopment" is a loaded and also dominionist term. If we connected every human settlement on earth with roads, it's game over for the remaining natural reserves. Putting roads through the Amazon is what really accelerated development of agricultural territory.

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No, it’s an accurate and objective term. All you’re saying is that we need to keep some places underdeveloped in order to protect the environment. Which is an entirely fair point.

It's not objective. "Under" implies some ideal state of development, and that anything under that threshold is deficient, which is subjective. That's why I say it's a loaded term.

What would work instead? Lesser-developed and greater-developed? Sub-developed and super-developed?

>"Under" implies some ideal state of development

No, not necessarily "ideal". It simply implies there is an average or median level, with instances that are lower and instances that are higher.

>anything under that threshold is deficient

I think if you wanted a loaded term, you'd use something more like "development-deficient" and "development-abundant".

Fair enough - I guess I should have been a little more precise: I really meant that "underdeveloped" has a specific meaning, rather than "under" by itself.

"Underdeveloped" doesn't mean "less than average development", it means "not and/or insufficiently industrialized", implying a problem to be solved.

I don’t know about you, but if I walk into a restaurant’s toilet and see the river flowing below the hole,[1] I’d say that it might need a little more development. I don’t think literal shit rivers can be part of any developed nation. Objectively. Much less rivers where people fish and swim in.

    [1] I saw it in person in Laos and also in this popular video https://fb.watch/nQ-Xvh9iLO/

Natural areas?

No, "under-" means "below some baseline". If that baseline is objective (e.g. "the mean development of the most developed country") then "underdeveloped" is objective, just relative.

It implies a problem that needs solving. Undernourished, underbaked, underachiever. I’m struggling to think of a word so-constructed that doesn’t imply a need for improvement, aside from ones that are purely positional (undercoat). Underbid, I guess, but that seems in a different category to me.

It seems appropriate to me to describe a slum with poor roads and power as underdeveloped, but weird to describe wilderness as underdeveloped. The former brings to mind philanthropic NGOs, the latter, villains from popular pro-environmentalism fiction.

Sure, but that doesn't make it a subjective adjective. It just tells you something about what the person who uses the word thinks about what the word is being applied to.

It seems weird to me to refer to wilderness as "underdeveloped", but more because if it really is a wilderness then it should be undeveloped. If someone starts building things in it but few enough that the zone can be called "underdeveloped" then it's no longer the wilderness. In any case, what the original person said was that the country was underdeveloped. If there's not even a single road or rail between it and its neighbor, I'd say that's a fair assessment.

You don't call a low-calorie diet undernourishment.

The “under” connotes that it is less than it ought to be.

"under" implies a relationship to something else, a point of reference. That point of reference would vary (which is getting close to a definition of subjective).

Reminds me of the parable of the fisherman and banker: https://joneytalks.medium.com/the-parable-of-the-mexican-fis...

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