Quick Take: People should not say the word “cruxy” when already there exists the word “crucial.” | Twitter
Crucial sometimes just means “important” but has a primary meaning of “decisive” or “pivotal” (it also derives from the word “crux”). This is what’s meant by a “crucial battle” or “crucial role” or “crucial game (in a tournament)” and so on.
So if Alice and Bob agree that Alice will work hard on her upcoming exam, but only Bob thinks that she will fail her exam—because he thinks that she will study the wrong topics (h/t @Saul Munn)—then they might have this conversation:
Bob: You’ll fail Alice: I won’t, because I’ll study hard. Bob: That’s not crucial to our disagreement.
Using the word ‘cruxy’ encourages people to use the mental model of what the cruxes in the conversation happen to be. Encouraging the use of effective mental models is a useful task for language.
“Crucial to our disagreement” is 8 syllables to “cruxy”’s 2.
“Dispositive” is quite American, but has a more similar meaning to “cruxy” than plain “crucial”. “Conclusive” or “decisive” are also in the neighbourhood, though these are both feel like they’re about something more objective and less about what decides the issue relative to the speaker’s map.
I agree people shouldn’t use the word cruxy. But I think they should instead just directly say whether a consideration is a crux for them. I.e. whether a proposition, if false, would change their mind.
Edit: Given the confusion, what I mean is often people use “cruxy” in a more informal sense than “crux”, and label statements that are similar to statements that would be a crux but are not themselves a crux “cruxy”. I claim here people should stick to the strict meaning.
Quick Take: People should not say the word “cruxy” when already there exists the word “crucial.” | Twitter
Crucial sometimes just means “important” but has a primary meaning of “decisive” or “pivotal” (it also derives from the word “crux”). This is what’s meant by a “crucial battle” or “crucial role” or “crucial game (in a tournament)” and so on.
So if Alice and Bob agree that Alice will work hard on her upcoming exam, but only Bob thinks that she will fail her exam—because he thinks that she will study the wrong topics (h/t @Saul Munn)—then they might have this conversation:
Bob: You’ll fail
Alice: I won’t, because I’ll study hard.
Bob: That’s not crucial to our disagreement.
disagree because the word crucial is being massively overused lately.
I think it disambiguates by saying it’s specifically a crux as in “double crux”
If I understand the term “double crux” correctly, to say that something is a double crux is just to say that it is “crucial to our disagreement.”
Using the word ‘cruxy’ encourages people to use the mental model of what the cruxes in the conversation happen to be. Encouraging the use of effective mental models is a useful task for language.
“Crucial to our disagreement” is 8 syllables to “cruxy”’s 2.
“Dispositive” is quite American, but has a more similar meaning to “cruxy” than plain “crucial”. “Conclusive” or “decisive” are also in the neighbourhood, though these are both feel like they’re about something more objective and less about what decides the issue relative to the speaker’s map.
I agree people shouldn’t use the word cruxy. But I think they should instead just directly say whether a consideration is a crux for them. I.e. whether a proposition, if false, would change their mind.
Edit: Given the confusion, what I mean is often people use “cruxy” in a more informal sense than “crux”, and label statements that are similar to statements that would be a crux but are not themselves a crux “cruxy”. I claim here people should stick to the strict meaning.