ontic

Another little word that gave me pause. I recognised it just fine, from ontology, I just didn’t know that philosophy had done away with the –ology.

Do Greeks even say ontikós? *googles* Phew. Theologians do, at least: Η οντική εκδοχή του Είναι: Αιτιοκρατία και αξιολογία. “The ontic version of Being: Determinism and Axiology.”

The Magister does too (as do a bunch of philosophers on Quora):

Michael Masiello’s answer to How is God personally known and experienced?

But some intimation of the sacred abides in the human imagination, and the debate between theists and atheists ultimately rests on whether it makes more sense to say it exists only there or has some ontic referent.

Michael Masiello’s answer to Atheists: Why would any human want to be religious?

People want to feel that the world and the universe make some kind of ordered sense, and that their — our — existence in it has some sort of meaning. For some reason, they cannot accept responsibility for the idea that we human beings can make that meaning for ourselves; for them, if it’s not ontic, it’s not meaning at all.

Michael Masiello’s answer to What will you do if you found out that you were following the false religion after your death?

The prerogative of whatever deity happens to enjoy ontic status, and is probably in charge of the situation (not the embarrassed postmortem person)

Ontic – Wikipedia

In philosophy, ontic (from the Greek ὄν, genitive ὄντος: “of that which is”) is physical, real, or factual existence.

“Ontic” describes what is there, as opposed to the nature or properties of that being.

So, with regard to God: God as someone that really exists in the world, and isn’t just an abstract concept.

limn

I’m an arrogant overeducated effete sumbitch. I’m looking at the contributions so far, and going, ha! I know that word. That word too.

But the Magister has tripped yours truly up as well. And not with big words (Greek and Latin are my gig, after all), but with really small ones.

The Magister loves limn.

Michael Masiello’s answer to What are the best books on Sappho’s life?

In that book she translates Sappho’s poems, discusses the way the Greek originals speak, analyzes the way they think, and in some sense limns a convincing intellectual portrait, if not quite a biography, of this sublime poet.

Michael Masiello’s answer to What is the overall theme of the Bible?

Within these serious, even fatal, limitations, it limns an etiology, a history, and an anagogy for a growing body of chosen or elect humans, ab ovo per aspera ad astra. That’s its basic theme.

Michael Masiello’s answer to What did Beethoven mean when he said “Applaud my friends the comedy is over!”?

However, if we think about the verbally-indefinable emotional states his last major works seem to limn […] maybe he had found some kernel of peace, some palm at the end of the mind, some vision of the phoenix whose fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

limn – Dictionary Definition

Limn is a verb that means to represent or portray. It is most often used to describe the act of drawing or painting a portrait, but it can also refer to describing or outlining a scene or event.

The verb limn evolved from the Latin lumināre, “to illuminate.” The word referred originally to coloring (illuminating) manuscripts. The sense of “portray” or “depict” did not come into use until the late 16th century, but that meaning is close to the original, since someone who paints a portrait usually illuminates something about the subject’s character. The word is less often used of written description, as in “Her reviews tended to limn the worst aspects of the performance, ignoring the best.”

irenic

Love this word, because it comes from my sister’s name, Irene. Love this word, because it describes the attitude I aspire to having on the Quoras, and I use it a fair bit myself as a disclaimer. Love this word, because while I had seen it ages back, the Magister reintroduced me to it.

Michael Masiello’s answer to Why is Quora becoming so conservative?

Trump’s less irenic supporters and admirers seem to see Quora as a liberal enclave at the moment.

Michael Masiello’s answer to Why is it that many anti-Trump leftists can’t have a civil debate without immediately getting emotionally charged?

Liberals likewise owe a hearing to any conservative who is irenic and who will make arguments based on verifiable facts and logic.

Definition of IRENIC

favoring, conducive to, or operating toward peace, moderation, or conciliation

Eirene was the goddess of peace. Her name is also the Greek word for “peace,” and it gave rise to irenic and other peaceable terms including irenics (a theological term for advocacy of Christian unity), Irena (the genus name of two species of birds found in southern Asia and the Philippines), and the name Irene.

ineluctable

Habib Fanny has just included inexorable in A few of my favorite words here, and I wondered to myself: has the Magister used one of my favourite words, which is related to inexorable but is even more emotive?

Was there ever any doubt?

Michael Masiello’s answer to What is importance of divine intervention in literature?

By Plato’s time the gods and those more mercurial and ineluctable beings, the Fates and the Furies, had already been, to a large extent, mythicized.

Michael Masiello’s answer to Is there any neutral source where I can learn about Donald Trump and his politics?

There is no “view from nowhere”; subjectivity is irrefragable and ineluctable

Michael Masiello’s answer to Is it the people who don’t believe in any god or gods who need to be saved?

Saved from what? […] From death? Even more ineluctable than taxes.

Definition of INELUCTABLE

not to be avoided, changed, or resisted

Ah, that’s pale, Merriam–Webster. Bring on some etymology, that’ll help make it clear.

Like drama, wrestling was popular in ancient Greece and Rome. “Wrestler,” in Latin, is “luctator,” and “to wrestle” is “luctari.” “Luctari” also has extended senses – “to struggle,” “to strive,” or “to contend.” “Eluctari” joined “e-” (“ex-“) with “luctari,” forming a verb meaning “to struggle clear of.” “Ineluctabilis” brought in the negative prefix in- to form an adjective describing something that cannot be escaped or avoided. English speakers borrowed the word as “ineluctable” around 1623.

Not just “you can’t avoid it”, but “you can’t avoid it, no matter how hard you try”. Not just “no matter how hard you try”, but “no matter how hard you struggle against it”. Like a wrestler, pinned to the mat.

Perspectives on the Insurgency #5: It’s not your private salon

This is part #5 in a sequence of exchanges between myself and Jennifer Edeburn, on the appropriateness of complaints against Quora. See:

As with the preceding piece, Jennifer’s contribution has been significantly edited from her initial PM to me, as we’ve both been refining our thinking—and in this section, as we’ve both sought to avoid BNBR penalties by naming names.

Jennifer:

I’m going to keep going on the topic of comments here, but from a different angle. It would be ridiculous to expect that Quorans would not form networks of friends. However, the Quora experience is not a story. It does not have an end and a beginning, nor is it even episodic. For the average Quoran, it is purely transactional.

This leads to a (in my view) problem, when Quorans in a common network talk to each other in the comments, or make a comment, with the knowledge that a particular audience will give it the proper interpretation. The problem is that they do not account for the interpretation of the far larger number of viewers that may see it and be lacking the basis to interpret it according to its intent.

These types of comments or back-and-forth can promote a perception of arrogance. When I say arrogance here, the sentiment I’m trying to express is something like “I don’t like the rules, so I don’t have to obey the rules”, or perhaps “my version of the rules is better, so I can just do that”, or even worse, “I’m part of a club here on Quora, so and the rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to people in my club”.

As an example, there were several comments on a recent post on Necrologue that appeared to support the idea that a user was blocked capriciously. Some of these comments may have stemmed from person-bias, previously discussed. Others express a sense that this person should have been granted some leeway, or that his actions were not his fault, simply an irrepressible human response to the situation.

For the record, let’s take a look at what I found in his edit log:

  • “Please show me where vegetarianism is in that quote. I’m afraid I can’t see things that simply aren’t there.”
  • “Weak reply. Your claim was wrong, whether you were making it about “most” or all. They were not the only two choices given to non-Muslims. You were wrong. Deal with it.”
  • “You were wrong. Don’t post errors to Quora or people will show you’re speaking nonsense.”
  • “I can see why you posted this answer anonymously – I wouldn’t put my name to it either.”
  • “So cite the page numbers and quote him. Or run away. Your choice.”

That’s just in the last 48 hours before he was edit-blocked, and that is what is left over after mods presumably deleted the content that was reported. I think it’s really nice that all the commenters here seem to know each other and everyone feels like a club, but it seems to me that you’re all reinforcing each other’s viewpoint that you, and not Quora, have the right to say how strict the BNBR policy should be.

I know why you got your BNBR warning (What happened next?). I was pretty sure when I first read your post, and I found an old answer from Tatiana later that confirmed it. I know why Carlos didn’t get one. I suspect you won’t win your appeal.

Here again, the friendships are part of the problem; as I wrote above they cause you to lose sight of the fact that when you converse in the comments, you create the atmosphere of a private conversation, but your audience is still all of Quora. You think that the context should have been obvious, but to some stranger that doesn’t know you or Carlos, they didn’t get it and they reported it. The arrogance here is “everyone should have known what I meant, even though they might lack any piece of backstory and I neglected to make the effort to provide it and make sure that the context was encapsulated in the one entry.”

And that leads to one of my points about lack of perspective. You care about your feeling that Quora is a salon, and that you have personal connections with your friends here. I understand that. I think Quora actually understands and values that as well. Quora also cares about how the average user views its content, how the first time user appreciates what they see. I also understand that, and so should you. It is not an unreasonable thing they are asking, to be able to build their business. Quora is the owner of this house; they have the right to set the rules. You disagree? Fine. You want to write about it? Fine. But the rules still apply to you, and I do not feel it is not too much to ask, as Quora-the-business is doing, that you consider the appearance to the user on the outside of the club when you write comments.

My response:

I was waiting for when we’d finally disagree. I don’t disagree with everything, and I may not even disagree with the essence. But I disagree with some of this. In order:

The prominent Quoran: We aren’t naming the prominent Quoran who just got sanctioned as you described. I will not entertain speculation on Necrologue about why and how people were sanctioned, and BNBR prevents us saying that people are assholes and richly deserved the banhammer, and I do not feel I can quash commiserations on Necrologue comments.

FWIW though, I’ll say here, without naming the user, that they are profoundly insightful about their field, that I have learned a lot from them—and that they are a horrible sneering human being that I have refused to follow or to have anything to do with. And I’m astonished they weren’t sanctioned sooner.

I’m not going to tell others what to make of this user. I don’t feel it’s my place. Individuals will make their own call on whether the scholarliness outweighs the assholishness. Both are on public display, after all. And Quora has made its own call, and it needs to be able to.

The arrogance of comments: It is difficult to hold yourself to the same standard in comments as for answers, when comments take the form of 1-on-1 interaction. It is difficult to hold yourself to the same standard in comments as for answers, when they come across as a place for socialising and solidarity and banter. I think it’s unreasonable to hold them to the same standard, and I think it’s clear that there should be allowance for a more informal, bantering tone in comments than in answers.

Quora doesn’t, and Quora has made it explicit that the standard of behaviour is not that of participants in a 1-to-1 conversation, but of a random person stumbling onto your conversation (which is still, after all, public). I understand that you don’t either; but I continue to find that very difficult to get my head around.

My BNBR: I didn’t win the appeal. Of course. I know the tone-policing that Tatiana refers to (though I’ve been frustrated that I can’t find the post). I’ve spoken about what I think of tone-policing in the post (that it’s untenable, and it’s inconsistently applied), and I won’t repeat it here. I haven’t changed my mind on it.

I’ll just add that I barely know Carlos (though that must not what it be what it sounded like!), and I’m pretty sure he’s only vaguely aware of me. I actually don’t have a backstory with him, apart from noticing his tagline a couple of lines, and seeing one or two impish posts. We don’t have a lot of topics in common, after all. So it wasn’t cliquishness that made me make a friendly comment using a four letter word; it was what I consider neighbourliness.

This is not to refute your point, but to say that the “atmosphere of a private conversation” is something I assume for comments in general. And it’s a tall order not to. And that the amount of context needed for an outsider to understand what was going on was not inordinate.

Maybe I’m blinded. And I agree with the principle that cliquishness does not justify you breaking civility, or arrogating context. I disagree with this in particular was an issue of civility, which is what *I* think BNBR should be about. But clearly, the reporter and Quora have decided otherwise, that BNBR should also be about tone.

And if the policing of that becomes so obtrusive that I get dinged once a day rather than once a year over it, then I will likely leave Quora before I am banned.I understand the argument you make in your final paragraph.

I understood it when Tatiana made it too. I don’t embrace it. I’ve just commented on the origin of Michael Masiello‘s Yip Fuckwad, and though I think his edit block as a result was inane, I understand how it is offensive. But I honestly don’t see how I could have anticipated that anyone would take offence at “You don’t sound like a shitposter at all, Carlos!”. I’m serious. In fact, I don’t see how I can police myself from reoffending in that way again. I just don’t get it.

But then, those are the rules. And the rules are on your side of the argument. And disagreement with the law is not an excuse for breaking the law—though they are a motivation for civil disagreement against the law; for which I’ll bear the brunt.

But I’ll throw back to you (in comments, for that is our format). We conclude on a disagreement. I am going to break the fourth wall (?) of our Google doc, and cite your reaction to that last para:

But my concern is, is it really so important to you to use Quora in this way that you cannot make any constructive changes to avoid getting dinged once a day? You value your experience here that little, when all it would take is to put enough context in the comment?

… Maybe yes. But what sort of context could I have inserted in that instance? I’m honestly at a loss. The only remedy I see is not making the comment at all.

What is the future of Greece?

Gareth Jones asked me this at Nick Nicholas’ answer to Can fascism grow in Greece?, when I said that I don’t think so.

I’m not in a good position to judge, and I’m actually answering this to prod some Greeks closer to what’s been happening into an answer.

So, if they won’t vote in Golden Dawn, followed by some Reichstag fire or equivalent, what will happen instead?

Greeks already did their Trump/Corbyn/Brexit/Sanders, and voted in the ex-Eurocommunists, populists (though not authoritarians) on the left. And nothing got better.

Some will keep going even more radical, like Yiannis Papadopoulos’ cab driver in https://www.quora.com/Can-fascis…, and vote Communist or Golden Dawn. Some will go back to the clientilist centre. A bit more street violence than is already there. A lot more apathy about elections, and disenchantment with the political process.

But I’m not seeing a revolution, and I’m not seeing the hammer and sickle or the maeander waving over Syntagma Square. I think the time for that is past. I anticipate torpor, degradation of infrastructure and civic bonds, and ignoring national politics as a means to fixing anything. I anticipate a much more overt clientelism: it’s what got Greeks through when there was no rule of law and meritocracy, and it’s what they’ve known.

But I’m not in a good position to judge. And I’m A2A’ing those who I think are.

What does fluency mean in a conlang like Klingon?

Oh, it’s a very good question, ’erIq qaDye qaH and raHul chabra qaH. Although it’s a question I did prompt.

Let me clarify the question I prompted, because it may not be as obvious from the wording. Klingon is a made up language. Noone has ever spoken it fluently. All the records we have of it are some barked orders in the Trek movies, which the actors occasionally fumbled.

And yet, people in the Klingon mailing list, where I learned Klingon, had a clear notion of what was good Klingon, and what was clumsy, what was Klingonic and what was a poor translation from English. What was fluent Klingon, and what wasn’t.

And the question that pops to mind is, how the hell did they know? Where did that sense of fluent Klingon come from, if noone actually spoke it?

It’s a question that’s intrigued me with conlangs, and that I pondered with Lojban as well; Lojban though is a more perturbed linguistic system, relative to the norm, than Klingon is. (Even though Klingon is deliberately designed to be alien!)

The answer isn’t actually that complicated when you get over the initial shock of it.

Partly, it’s tied up with what the structure of the language permits. This is a language with only a handful of postpositions, a rather cumbersome (head-internal) relativisation strategy, limited means of subordination, no passives, very marked nominalisation strategies.

That’s not actually that unusual for a language. It is unusual for a Standard Average European language, and it means that the kind of syntactic complexities that are typical in a Standard Average European are going to be very cumbersome to convey.

So you don’t convey them. You use structures that are clearly easier to put in the language—and for that matter, to parse as a learner of the language. You avoid syntactic embedding. You use active constructions. You avoid nominalisations, guided by the fact that they are already so marked (aspect + nominalisation suffix, and with no obvious way of expressing the subject or object of the nominalisation).

And you call the result Klingonic. You don’t say “I anticipate a hostile reception of the ambassador by the Terrans”; you’re hard-pressed to find a way of saying “by” at all, and “receivingness” looks heavy enough that you don’t want to stick anything onto it. Duy’a’ -vaD?? tera’nganpu’ HevtaHghach vID vIpIH? It’s a trainwreck of nouns in search of case, we don’t see Klingon do that, and we don’t want Klingon to do that.

You say: When the Terrans receive the ambassador, they will likely be hostile: I anticipate this. Duy’a’ luHevDI’ tera’ngan, ghaytan vID ’e’ vIpIH. And you know that’s the Klingon way of doing it.

There’s other stuff going on, of course. The emphasis in English language pedagogy of plain English, and active, straightforwardly parsable constructions. Exoticism and consciously distancing yourself from English.

And underlying it all, a notion I like to call folk functionalism. Functionalism in linguistics is the notion that language is the way it is in order to communicate meaning most efficiently. Folk functionalism, like folk psychology and folk botany, is a pre-scientific understanding of functionalism, which people can come up with in their heads without being trained linguists, and that they can apply to learning a language with Klingon—based on the resources available to them as Klingon linguistic structures, and their own linguistic common sense.