Circumlocution: A Way Of Talking Around Something

[avatar (Alistair Young)]

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@jrdougan <jdougan@acm.org> on 2017-06-14 18:16:25 wrote

How do the eldrae talk about what we call positive vs. negative rights?

@Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2017-06-14 18:23:18 wrote

Only the latter can be called “rights”, because the corresponding obligations they impose are on you, symmetrically, to refrain from things.

Rights to things are - depending on how polite you’re being - called something like “entitlements”, or “privileges”, or “some kind of slaver-cultist bullshit”, cause it’s not like whatever they’re to is going to exist without making someone produce it, and they’re not so fond of that notion.

@Jade Nekotenshi <nekotenshi0@gmail.com> on 2017-06-14 19:48:07 wrote

Well, the first thing to come to mind is a dismissive gloss as “a particularly pernicious form of mutual-slaving”, but that’s probably a bit too snarktacular.

More generously, perhaps “the forcible imposition of the presumed preferences of the speaker’s social clique upon involuntarily coadunated groups which the speaker perceives as acting coercively toward them and their social clique”. Though that’s even wordier than your version.

@morgrimmoon <morgrimmoon@gmail.com> on 2017-06-15 03:46:01 wrote

I think it may also depend on what parts of the internet you hang out with, and therefore the sort of flavour of ‘social justice’ you usually see. I mostly see positive applications with a few “please tell me that is either a joke or an overly-enthusiastic but ignorant teen who is trying Too Hard” outliers; the dialogue I’ve seen from others suggests they mostly encounter the extremists and only a few naive optimists swept along in their wake.

I’d gloss it as “attempts to rewrite perceived coercive aspects of culture via applied amateur memetics”.

@Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2017-06-18 14:41:30 wrote

Hm. I’m not sure you could torture the Eldraeic equivalent to “coercion” enough (acts which violate the Principle of Consent) to make that work, but I’ll fiddle with it a bit.

@morgrimmoon <morgrimmoon@gmail.com> on 2017-06-18 23:16:42 wrote

Hm, that’s a good point. It’s coercion for us because humans are pack-social with strong peer norming instincts that can be used to drag others ‘into line’, but eldrae are immune to that. “Attempts to rewrite perceived discriminatory biases within cultures via applied amateur memetics”, maybe?

@Specialist290 <carpentereli@outlook.com> on 2017-06-15 22:02:53 wrote

I’m going for something (relatively) simple: “Seeking-to-make-the-purpose-of-one-the-purpose-of-all.”

@Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2017-06-18 14:42:30 wrote

Not quite sure what you’re going for there, although the snarktacular might consider it a good dysphemism for “politics”.

@nweismuller <nweismuller@hotmail.com> on 2017-06-18 12:47:18 wrote

I think I’d gloss ‘social justice’, as a theory, as ‘the doctrine that moral responsibility rests in groups rather than individuals’. This then logically implies the necessity for group-level outcomes to be enforced, as groups are the relevant moral actors under the theory. It seems rather less awkward than your formulation, while still fitting the source material.

@Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2017-06-18 14:47:43 wrote

Hm, yeah, that could be a good one for theory vs. praxis, indeed.

@nweismuller <nweismuller@hotmail.com> on 2017-06-22 12:59:32 wrote

That would then, I think, make the praxis ‘the outcomes sought under a doctrine of collective moral responsibility’.

@Specialist290 <carpentereli@outlook.com> on 2017-06-18 19:14:49 wrote

That’s sort of what I was trying to go for with mine, although you put in a lot more of the essential nuance. I admit I like yours better.

@Specialist290 <carpentereli@outlook.com> on 2017-06-26 23:04:59 wrote

It may be tangential to the project itself, but since the topic came up, I’d like to link to an interesting article I ran across on the complexities of the relationship between “social justice” and “property absolutism”:

Property Absolutism and Social Justice | Cato Unbound

@nweismuller <nweismuller@hotmail.com> on 2017-07-01 02:14:04 wrote

Another thought: ‘social justice’ in literal translation means something like ‘international arbitration’? I’m honestly surprised that the literal translation isn’t something more like ‘the justice of institutional design’, i.e. the way to ensure a society of consent, rather than a slave state, as contrasted with ‘the justice of individual action’, which ensures you act correctly in dealing with others in everyday life. Underlying principles may be the same, but those who are in the position to design insitutions may well have some more difficult problems to deal with in ensuring they act correctly than those who simply must ensure they act honorably and discharge their personal debts.