When it comes to medical issues language can be correct or incorrect. It matters.
If I went into hospital to have a debridement and someone decided amputation was an alternative I’d be pretty pissed waking up to find something had been chopped off rather than cleaned up.
It’s not a matter of using variolation having a “standard usage”—it has a specific meaning. I don’t think anyone will assume you want to give someone smallpox, but it does reduce the credibility of what is being said when variolation is the term chosen. (edited to add: variolation from variola = smallpox).
This website is called lesswrong, here’s an opportunity to be a lot less wrong about something.
I’m not here to make friends, or get praise, or karma points and I will continue to point out errors made by people who are dabbling in subjects that they have little/no prior knowledge of.
Either people will consider what I’ve said and do some research for themselves. Or not.
Couldn’t you have also made the exact same argument for the word “vaccination” some number of generations ago, for almost exactly the same reason? It too derives from root words about a practice intended for protecting specifically against smallpox. (Namely, infecting someone with cowpox).
When words are so overly specific so as to almost completely fall out of usefulness for their original meaning (as in the case of both vaccination and variolation, since smallpox is not in circulation any more), it seems pretty natural to see people to repurpose them for other closely-related or more general meanings—that’s certainly one common way language evolves.
If the original meaning is no longer even remotely relevant (so misunderstanding is vanishingly unlikely) and the new meaning is a natural-to-infer and useful extension for the topic being discussed, then this seems like good communication, which is what words are for.
No it doesn’t seem “pretty natural to see people re-purpose” variolation for something that would be labelled in standard and accepted medical terms as vaccination with a live virus.
Find some people in the medical profession that think it’s a good idea then I may reconsider my stance, otherwise I’ve made my point and don’t intend to post any more comments on the subject.
This website is called lesswrong, here’s an opportunity to be a lot less wrong about something.
Wrong in the sense of the sequences doesn’t mean Inconsistent with how authorities define a term or Not in line with the platonic form towards which a word points. It’s rather about having a map of the world that makes wrong empiric predictions.
When it comes to medical issues language can be correct or incorrect. It matters.
If I went into hospital to have a debridement and someone decided amputation was an alternative I’d be pretty pissed waking up to find something had been chopped off rather than cleaned up.
It’s not a matter of using variolation having a “standard usage”—it has a specific meaning. I don’t think anyone will assume you want to give someone smallpox, but it does reduce the credibility of what is being said when variolation is the term chosen. (edited to add: variolation from variola = smallpox).
This website is called lesswrong, here’s an opportunity to be a lot less wrong about something.
I’m not here to make friends, or get praise, or karma points and I will continue to point out errors made by people who are dabbling in subjects that they have little/no prior knowledge of.
Either people will consider what I’ve said and do some research for themselves. Or not.
Couldn’t you have also made the exact same argument for the word “vaccination” some number of generations ago, for almost exactly the same reason? It too derives from root words about a practice intended for protecting specifically against smallpox. (Namely, infecting someone with cowpox).
https://www.etymonline.com/word/vaccination
When words are so overly specific so as to almost completely fall out of usefulness for their original meaning (as in the case of both vaccination and variolation, since smallpox is not in circulation any more), it seems pretty natural to see people to repurpose them for other closely-related or more general meanings—that’s certainly one common way language evolves.
If the original meaning is no longer even remotely relevant (so misunderstanding is vanishingly unlikely) and the new meaning is a natural-to-infer and useful extension for the topic being discussed, then this seems like good communication, which is what words are for.
No it doesn’t seem “pretty natural to see people re-purpose” variolation for something that would be labelled in standard and accepted medical terms as vaccination with a live virus.
Find some people in the medical profession that think it’s a good idea then I may reconsider my stance, otherwise I’ve made my point and don’t intend to post any more comments on the subject.
Wrong in the sense of the sequences doesn’t mean Inconsistent with how authorities define a term or Not in line with the platonic form towards which a word points. It’s rather about having a map of the world that makes wrong empiric predictions.