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Comment by wonger_ | Hacker News Reader

+1 to antimemetics. I don't usually enjoy sci-fi, but this one captured my attention. You can read it online too: https://qntm.org/scp

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I read it this year, too. It's a fun read, but I wouldn't recommend anything past the first group of articles (that is, don't bother with "Five Five Five Five Five"). The ideas are good, to be sure, but the overall arc past that is pretty weak.

If you enjoyed that, the short stories are quite good. qntm = Sam Hughes, and some of their work is published under that name.

Sam Hughes is a man. Why are you referring to him as their?

If I don’t know someone’s gender and can’t be bothered to look it up I’ll use “they”. And I know Sam’s of both genders.

There's nothing grammatically incorrect or ambiguous about the sentence. What's causing your confusion?

I no idea who Sam is, but I believe "their" is typically utilized to describe plurals while "his", "hers", "its" describe the singular.

My initial reading led me to believe that qntm was a group aliased as Sam.

It’s ideological. It’s using language that intentionally provides less information.

Their usage of "their" aligns with how English has been used for centuries (Wikipedia says 14th century), but more importantly the author's writing was the topic of discussion not their gender.

Policing other's pronoun usage is ideological, but that's your argument, not theirs.

Obviously, that is: statistically, all involved here (the SCP author, the HN commenters, you, me) are men, so saying "he" is very likely correct. If by chance someone here is nonetheless a woman she will probably speak up.

'Their' is practical not ideological - Sam could be Samuel or Samantha, and I didn't know which. Also, bring up the use of 'their' for unknown gender with Shakespeare and Austen, who both did it.

The only one being 'ideological' here is you, getting worked up over basic grammar that's been around longer than Modern English. Go out and touch some grass.

Sam can be short for Samantha or Samuel. "Their" allows one to avoid mis-gendering someone when in ignorance of their gender.

Yeah, the first half or so is a blast, but there’s a point where I feel it drops off quite a bit. (For me, I think it was when the POV changed to Adam.) Still worth a read, though!

I remember hearing about this before and meaning to read it, but for some reason completely forgot.

Thanks for reminding me.

It's not your first time reading the story.

You write a comment on Hacker News — but what you've written turns out to be hieroglyphs, and nobody can understand them, not even you.

Thank you sooo much for posting!

and now in print too https://qntm.org/publ

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