I meant “Alicornist” as a, perhaps slightly playful, shorthand for “person who adheres to [some important subset of] the ideas of Less Wrong user Alicorn as laid out in her sequence on living luminously”. If this terminology is felt to be unclear, offensive or objectionable in some other way, I am certainly willing to not use it again. I’d appreciate an explanation, though.
Well, first off, the terms “luminous” and “luminosity” already exist and serve the same purpose, so it’s needlessly confusing to invent new terms that mean the same thing or close to the same thing. Secondly, identifying yourself or others with terms at all is generally undesirable, as it promotes several irrational thought processes. I’m actually in the process of writing a top-level post on this subject, and that has me in focus mode, so apologies if I seem unnecessarily picky.
the terms “luminous” and “luminosity” already exist and serve the same purpose
And they’re worse. Specifically they are ingroup jargon with a well known outgroup meaning that looks somewhere between an amusing non-sequitur and arrogant. “You’re claiming to glow?”
ist is at least a recognizable English language template.
Given that “alicorn” is a word, I think “Alicornist” is also ingroup jargon. You’d have to know who I am to understand it. Otherwise it’s “do you worship unicorn horns or something?”
It’s a word that I had to Google, and I have a medium-large vocabulary. “Luminous” is not. You are third in the search results. I think it would easily be seen as a name.
“Alicornist?” “Alicornism?” Can we try not to use these sorts of terms?
I meant “Alicornist” as a, perhaps slightly playful, shorthand for “person who adheres to [some important subset of] the ideas of Less Wrong user Alicorn as laid out in her sequence on living luminously”. If this terminology is felt to be unclear, offensive or objectionable in some other way, I am certainly willing to not use it again. I’d appreciate an explanation, though.
Well, first off, the terms “luminous” and “luminosity” already exist and serve the same purpose, so it’s needlessly confusing to invent new terms that mean the same thing or close to the same thing. Secondly, identifying yourself or others with terms at all is generally undesirable, as it promotes several irrational thought processes. I’m actually in the process of writing a top-level post on this subject, and that has me in focus mode, so apologies if I seem unnecessarily picky.
And they’re worse. Specifically they are ingroup jargon with a well known outgroup meaning that looks somewhere between an amusing non-sequitur and arrogant. “You’re claiming to glow?”
ist is at least a recognizable English language template.
Given that “alicorn” is a word, I think “Alicornist” is also ingroup jargon. You’d have to know who I am to understand it. Otherwise it’s “do you worship unicorn horns or something?”
It’s a word that I had to Google, and I have a medium-large vocabulary. “Luminous” is not. You are third in the search results. I think it would easily be seen as a name.
Don’t forget about Google’s annoying tendency to give you relevant search results.
Our Alicorn is second, third, sixth, and seventh on the search results for Alicorn here, not counting “in your social circle”.
Awww, warmfuzzies :)
Using “Startpage.com″ (which runs anonymous google searches—useful for getting non-personalized results), I got:
Alicorn—results #9 and #10 (behind lots of My Little Pony) Luminosity—result #4, which is pretty good given the brain-training game of the same name.
The brain training game is Lumosity.