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Monday, May 5, 2014

Retag Important Concepts - The Google Alerts Standard

Self post in the Dark Enlightenment subreddit: A Little Bit Racist

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There didn't use to be a specific word for when somebody or something is a little bit racist...but now there is..."rayshist".  If this new word catches on...do you think it could impact society in a noticeable way?

Right now we say...

"Bob is a little bit racist"

In the future we might say...

"Bob is rayshist"

Clearly it's a bit more efficient...but I wonder if perhaps the adoption of this specific word might change the race dialogue.  Could it possibly encourage more honest discussion?  Maybe people would be slightly more inclined to acknowledge that they are a little bit racist?  Maybe we'll discover that most people are rayshist?  Maybe political correctness would lose some ground?  Maybe society's reflection would become more accurate?

Just how important are words anyways?  A while back I had the idea of allowing people to choose where their taxes go.  But when I googled using a description of the concept...I didn't find any relevant results.  So I took the liberty of giving the concept a unique label... "pragmatarianism".  The label hasn't caught on yet...but at least all the search results are relevant.

From my perspective, language can improve/evolve at a faster rate if we encourage and facilitate the creation of new words.  With this in mind...I created a new subreddit...Linvoid.  

As you can see...I've submitted some of the words that I've more or less created/commandeered.  Are the words that I created terrible?  Sure...why not.  Are you all going to laugh at me because I invented some lame new words?  Go ahead!  It's ok...I really don't mind or care.  Feel free to downvote any of the words that you really don't want anybody ever using.  

The point is...I'm not going to let the fear of failure stop me from throwing new words out there.  Hopefully some of you have the same attitude.

If you're crazy/creative...then I highly encourage you to come up with a new word for "Cathedral".  Right now it's a needle in a search haystack.  If it truly is an important concept...then why do you want to force people to swim through an ocean of irrelevant results?  Shouldn't you want all the relevant search results to be extremely easy to find?  If so, then you have to give Cathedral a unique tag.

Are there other NRx concepts that are important enough to warrant a unique tag?  What about "exit"?  Here are the search results.  What percentage of them are relevant?  Maybe 1%?  Do you think it makes a difference that it's a needle in a haystack?

Google has a neat tool called Google Alerts.  You can sign up to receive an e-mail whenever there's a new search result for a term that you're interested in.  Clearly you wouldn't be able to create a Google Alert for "Cathedral" or "exit"...you'd be swamped with irrelevant results.

There's a bit of irony there.  Do you see it?  The Cathedral is the problem because...?  Why was it again?  Something to do with hiding or suppressing the truth?  Errr...except...it's really not the Cathedral's fault that the truth will not be televised.  The Cathedral really didn't give itself a label that would Google Alert people to irrelevant results.  That was your camp.  You're shooting yourself in the foot and complaining that the race is rigged.  You're putting a bushel over your own candle and complaining that it's dark.

It's disambiguation time.  Come up with some unique words.  Channel your inner wordsmith.  

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