My favorite notion of the week: complaining this morning about grifters “doing violence to concepts.” How evocative! He meant it negatively, but ofc sometimes concepts must be violently recast!
(Thanks to @mariodgabriele for hosting—I think there’ll be a recording?)
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When is it best to “do violence to concepts” vs. defining new concepts? I guess that’s one of the core tactical question of culture wars?
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I struggle with this a lot with gamification. I’m trying to distinguish myself from normal gamification but people know what gamification is so I don’t think I can get away with a new word. I’m attacking the concept of gamification as people know it.
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At the same time, the least violent approach I can think of is calling points, badges, and leaderboards the “Foursquare genre” and asking what other genres might exist.
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The struggle is how do I hijack or create a term to accurately describe my views to others?
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Gamification is definitely a concept to which I would like to do violence.
It’s worth distinguishing between words and ideas - terms and theories.
Terms are a matter of convenience, communication, marketing, searchability, etc.
Theories are a matter of truths and misconceptions. Problems and solutions.
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The larger question really isn’t about terms, but questions like “how do I best advocate for my ideas?”
One’s answers to that may or may not involve terms.
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