Poison-Depilling Problems

Poison-Depilling Problemsribbonfarm.com
Poison-depilling problems
by mishaderidder.eth13093 🥝 • 3y
AI summary of the linked article

Venkatesh Rao (no, the author isn't named in the text; the piece is unsigned in this excerpt) argues that writers should avoid "poison-pilled" terms, meaning useful ideas whose wording is tainted by political baggage, unsound analysis, or distasteful associations. The article cites two examples: "enshittification," coined by Cory Doctorow, and "luxury belief," coined by Rob Henderson. It says that qualifying these terms, challenging their provenance, or appropriating them with inverted valence each fails, so it proposes coining new terms instead. The alternatives it offers are "favela gothic," for enshittification, and "referred chauvinism," for luxury beliefs, with the author noting these are not claimed to be great terms.

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Nice, it reminded me of scissor statements by Scott Alexander: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/
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For me, crypto has been a poison-pilled term for quite some time.

One of the reasons I didn't get into crypto earlier was because it attracted only the most hardcore libertarian friends of mine, and I felt that being interested in crypto is a political statement. Few years later I only heard about people buying drugs with BTC. When I dived in, I learned about scammers and "Have Fun Staying Poor" people, which I found off-putting.

I recall that @theblockchainsocialist.eth still faces challenges when trying to convince people from the left that blockchain can actually be helpful for people sharing their political POV.

I think the longer some term is out there and the more diverse the people it attracts, the higher the chances it will get poison-depilled. For example, in the American Civil War, "abolishing slavery" was a political statement; now, people from the whole political spectrum agree with it.

It's good to have some methods (like the ones from vgr) though, so we don't need to wait 150 yrs to poison-depill the term.


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