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Comment by cardanome | Hacker News Reader

"Superhuman" gives me the creeps as a German.

I know it has a positive connotation with super heroes in US culture but for me it sounds like Übermensch. Especially as it is the direct opposite of "subhuman".

Plus outside of tech bro circles, people either actively hate generative AI or are at least super annoyed by the over-hype of it. Duolingo went all in on AI and got a huge shitstorm.

Branding your company on a current hype that might either burst soon or/and leave lots of people unemployed is maybe not a wise decisions.

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> I know it has a positive connotation with super heroes in US culture

I'm not sure about this. I'm a US citizen, but it absolutely does not have positive connotations to me at all. It has very negative ones.

Are you a native English speaker? I can't think of a scenario where "superhuman" has negative connotations in American English. When we say someone has superhuman skill, or speed, or strength, it is always a positive thing.

> Are you a native English speaker?

Yes, I am. Born and raised in the US.

There are instances where the term is used in a positive sense, yes, but those are limited in scope. "Superhuman strength" rather than just "superhuman".

"Superhuman" on its own is a term that has long been tightly associated with a wide variety of horrible things. Eugenics, for example.

I honestly think most American English speakers are not thinking about eugenics when they hear that term. I believe you when you say that it has those connotations for you but I think you are in a small minority.

Without a doubt

I like superhuman as an adjective, it implies some quality of a man is superhuman, but a superhuman as a standalone item is very frightening as it spells obsolescence for the rest of us ( I guess this is the plot of X-Men )

I had exact same issues with "Uber".

"Superhuman" is just "Superman" but without getting sued by DC comics.

And with the additional small hint of Nazism for Europeans. But otherwise exactly the same more or less :)

Nope. You must be thinking of the terms "Untermensch" (used a lot by Nazis) and "Übermensch" (introduced by Nietzsche, and rarely used by Nazis). "Supermensch" was never used at all.

Growing up in the 90s in Sweden, we definitively were taught that "Übermensch" ("Övermänniska" in Swedish, literally "Above Human") was something the Nazis promoted during their time, together with demoting "Untermensch". Maybe that's wrong, and if so I thank you for the correction, but "Superhuman" does give me similar vibes regardless, not because of the exact wording, but because of the ideas/concepts.

Nietzsche’s sister tried to garner favor with the Nazi regime. After Nietzsche’s death, she took his notes, published them under the title “Will to Power” and made it all sound as though Hitler was the fulfillment of Nietzschean ideas. Even scholars who built their careers on Nietzschean philosophy fell for this. For example Ayn Rand. So your teachers were in good company. In truth, everything about the Nazis would have made Nietzsche sick to his stomach: group-think, racism, big government, socialism, robbery, personality cult, lack of intellect, mass appeal, Gleichschaltung, militarism.

Elisabeth and Bernhard were rabid nationalists and antisemites long before the NSDAP. They established their vegetarian-antisemitic-'Aryan' colony in Paraguay in 1887, two years before Adolf Hitler was born.

It failed for financial reasons and the rather harsh environment. They ditched the vegetarianism and started selling meat to get some money, spiraling into alcohol and morphine abuse. In 1889 Bernhard killed himself with strychnine, after which Elisabeth started her career as a fake chronicler by writing a book aimed at creating a much nicer and 'Aryan' image of Bernhard and the colony than the truth would have allowed.

As you allude to, Friedrich Nietzsche poured buckets and buckets of abuse over people like his sister and other german nationalists, refusing for the entirety of his life to identify as german, and towards the end of his life he even claimed to be a polish nobleman, free of the tainted blood of the germans.

What do you think ‘super’ means ? It is latin for ‘over’, wich in German is über. In English it has come to take on a broader meaning, but Nietzsche’s übermensch is called ‘superman’ in most English translations, even if ‘superhuman’ would be more accurate.

GP doesn’t imply Nazis used ‘Supermensch’, just that the ‘superhuman’ translates to übermensch and that the branding might evoke this concept for European ears.

Yes, the idea of the death of God also gives me shivers.

'Superhuman' sales representative: "Then you might be interested in our new Deus Ex package".

You cannot expect other countries to stop using normal words because they remind you of the bad things your country did.

Shame for what Germany did during the Nazi regime is something for Germans to bear, not Americans. We are not at fault for that, and we have no obligation to change our own culture to accommodate your guilt.

That’s quite a leap. The parent commenter didn’t call for them to withdraw the branding, they were just sharing something interesting and unique about their perspective as a German.

Just to be clear, I never said that the word should be banned.

I am not sure how important the German or general European market is so hard to say whether it even should be a consideration for Grammarly.

That said the ideas of some people being intrinsically better than other people isn't specific to Germany. Eugenics used to be popular in many countries including the US. It is very advisable for other countries to learn from German history so our mistakes are not repeated.

>I am not sure how important the German or general European market

I'm sure a large population of second language English speakers is a huge market for grammarly, no?

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