Language

hackenslash said:

No. Words are researched by teams of researchers trawling (mostly) print publication, although of course the tendency is toward digital publications as the net continues to take over. When a word comes into popular use, the tendency is to go and find the earliest printed source and start there.

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That's it huh? Sounds kinda lazy to me.

psikhrangkur said:

EDIT: This thread is now about great words and how great they are.

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Sponge is the greatest word of them all.

Led Zeppelin said:

That's it huh? Sounds kinda lazy to me.

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Try it sometime. It's a real labour.

Led Zeppelin said:

That's it huh? Sounds kinda lazy to me.

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Have you ever engaged in any serious research?

You kind of have to have done so to appreciate just how much work goes into this. Even just sitting at the computer doing research is real labour.

For me, it's the hardest thing about writing. I can smash off a 3,000 word opinion piece in about an hour. Writing a proper blog post with factual content takes days, and almost all of it is research, and this includes topics in which I know what I'm talking about. Just checking and making sure I get every factual statement correct is so much work.

When I'm writing at full chat, I produce a blog post maybe once or twice a month, and it isn't because I'm not doing anything, but because the vast majority of that sort of writing is research. The same is definitely true of lexical research, which is often even harder, because I know where to go to find the info I need. Lexicographers don't have ready resources to go to for much of their work, they have to go and find original sources based on instinct and exceptional google-fu, and that's just the internet portion.

Lexicographers- Thats what they are called them. Cool sounding job title.

hackenslash said:

Have you ever engaged in any serious research?

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Probably only about twice a year I might spend a week obsessively researching something. I cant imagine what it would be like contributing to a blog on a regular basis and going over every single word to make sure every single thing I say was 100% factual. I would probably go insane.

The last research project I completed took me nearly 2 years of approximately 10-15 hours a week. I ended up with thousands of images, documents, and notes.

Serious research is anything but lazy - it's driven, almost manic and obsessive.

Sparhafoc said:

The last research project I completed took me nearly 2 years of approximately 10-15 hours a week. I ended up with thousands of images, documents, and notes.

Serious research is anything but lazy - it's driven, almost manic and obsessive.

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Can you do my wastewater coursework for me? Thanks.

I'm sorry, I lack the ability. I'm not effluent in waste management.

Well, I suppose I'll manage. Rather a large influent of resources around here.

hackenslash said:

Whether you recognise it as language has no bearing on the fact that it fulfils all the necessary and sufficient criteria to be a language. It's a stupid position.

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Of course its language, even interpretiv dance is language, even Klingon is a language. Does not mean I have to like it, does not mean I have to use it, does not mean I have to accept "bruh" becoming a permanent part of the english language. At least not yet. So far its just a fad that hopefully will pass.
And like I stated quite a while ago, I certainly will not argue with the dictionary.

Or maybe I could have avoided being called stupid by you, if I just wrote "english language" rather than just language?

Its like ... pineapple pizza. Of course it is pizza by defintion, but that certainly does not keep me from calling it a culinary abomination going against everything that is holy in this world and that you are commiting a grave sin, by putting it in the same category as napoli and pepperoni pizza.

21st Demon Lord said:

Or maybe I could have avoided being called stupid by you, if I just wrote "english language" rather than just language?

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Not remotely, because it IS English.

Oh, and I didn't call you stupid, I called what you said stupid.

hackenslash said:

Oh, and I didn't call you stupid, I called what you said stupid.

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A factually correct statement.

Led Zeppelin said:

Probably only about twice a year I might spend a week obsessively researching something. I cant imagine what it would be like contributing to a blog on a regular basis and going over every single word to make sure every single thing I say was 100% factual. I would probably go insane.

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I currently have three posts on the go, all running to between 3,000 and 6,000 words as they stand, and I switch between them just to stop my brain from turning to mush, because the research is intense. Every time I write a section, I have to check not only thr facts in terms of what I'm writing, but also checking for internal consistency. Each of them has been at some stage of writing for art least a couple of weeks and, in the case of one of them, because it's dealing with high-level mathematics, which is well outside my area of expertise, every single fucking syllable has to be checked and rechecked and, because mathematics is not my field, I have to carefully read every source to make sure I've genuinely understood the material.

One of them is dealing with Gödel's incompleteness theorems, because it's a post about the limits of knowledge, and Gödel's incompleteness theorems are a candidate for driving more bullshit and misunderstanding than any other topic on the net. I've spoken to mathematicians who, whenever somebody mentions Gödel, do that face-crashing trick that Douglas Adams likened to the spectacular crashing of Arctic ice floes in the spring.

Real research is hard. That's one of the reasons that Twain's famous dictum is more true now than it ever was; a lie is halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on.

One of the reasons people like me get so aggressive in dealing with bullshit is precisely that. The bullshit we encounter daily has absolutely no requirement to be true, but any counter to it must be, and even that requires research. Frankly, if it weren't for people like Sparhafoc, AronRa, Potholer54, Nesslig, Calilasseia, and many, many others, they wouldn't ever get countered, precisely because of how hard and demanding real, factually accurate research is, compared to simply extracting some assertion directly from the rectal sphincter and presenting it as Earth-shattering wisdom.

One of the attractions of conspiracy theories for many is the sheer weight of evidence they're presented with when first encountering it, because everybody's citing the same set of facts, and all agreeing with each other. Those debunking them are always behind, and each debunker has a different approach, meaning they're raising different objections to the material presented.

For example, I was just involved somewhere else where some moron was asserting the atheist atrocities fallacy, citing all the brutal, genocidal dictators of the 20th century and challenging us to name one Christian who'd done the same. I and others countered with voluminous effort showing how, for example, the statistical correlation he was trying to draw didn't stack up for reasons having to do with how statistics works. I'd entirely forgotten that there was an instance of a Christian dictator in the 20th century who'd racked up in excess of 20 (oops; see how easy it is to slip up and leave a crack into which doubt can be wedged? That's why counters have to be factually accurate) 10 million deaths, and is actually the person for whom the phrase 'crimes against humanity' was coined. I'd entirely forgotten it.

So counters come piecemeal, and in different forms, and always behind the curve because of the requirement for a successful counter to actually be in accord with reality. The conspiricunts have no such requirement, and can just ejaculate their assertions into the public sphere like a teenager who's just discovered the relationship between his right hand and his cock.

Trust me, genuine, robust research is anything but lazy, no matter how its conducted.

Why bother to go through all of history to counter the "atheist atrocities fallacy"?
Just tell them there were between 50 and 100 million native Americans on the Americas and ask them what happened to them.
Spoiler: Good, god fearing, men happened to them. Also eliminates every chance for them to go "that was just one guy".
Could also spice it up with a distafully bubbly cartoon for good measure.

Oh, we covered all that.

"Christianity IS dictatorship, and it's caused the deaths of, well, we frankly can't even put a number on it. Every slave killed prior to the emancipation is quite rightly laid at Christianity's door. All the deaths of reproductive healthcare providers in the US. All the lynchings in the South (what, you think the crosses are coincidence?)

Honestly, I haven't even scratched the surface of the despicable history of Christianity and the deaths it's been involved in, either by complicity, by mandate or directly. No 20th century dictator can even come close to the deaths directly attributable to Christianity throughout history. And don't even get me started on how many deaths can be attributed to the interference in secular law of Christian ideology. Every death suffered because of abortion laws, for example, is on your lot. Complicity in the Rwandan genocide, not to mention the Church's role in the AIDS epidemic in Africa, the killing of witches (and I mean modern killings, not just the thing that nobody expects).

Honestly, if you want to play this fucking game, you're only adding to the list of games you're entirely without competence to engage in, and you're going to lose it badly."

Pogroms against the Jews for centuries, forced conversion of the Jews and pagans (if they didn't just murder them all, that is), massacre of tens if not hundreds of thousands of women and infant girls on the asinine charges of witchcraft, colonial massacres, slave trade... the numbers of dead in the name of Christianity are monstrously high. Truly a historically barbaric belief system, and the idea that it's all pacified now fails to account for current depraved atrocities committed by Christians in Africa, The Philippines, and other Pacific nations.

My great words thread.

Okey, back to topic then ...
Whats your favorite word psi?
Mine is "moist" or "wet" ... mostly cause some people find it unnerving and somewhat unplesant.