[MD] Doug Renselle & Language

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Ian,

Ian said:
Interesting Matt, not a surprise that you subscribe to the more 
descriptive, looser use of language that allows us to work with 
attractive potted phrases and slogans .... so much easier to spread 
messages that way (obviously, as I said to Krim; memes are a 
subject of mine).

But this is making my point that we really have two different domains 
of discourse.

Matt:
I think conceptualizing it as two different domains is about right.  If we 
think in terms of a pool of water, I think the right way to think about 
the dynamics between technical discourse communities and something 
like "cultural common language" is that the smaller pools exist within 
the larger pool, and one can drop a rock into either one and send 
reverberations into the other.  Sometimes technical communities will 
come up with new ways of thinking that will shift the common sense, 
and sometimes the common sense generates problems that shake up 
a technical community by showing how it's out-dated.  (Logical 
positivism is a funny example, because I think it largely collapsed 
because of the technical debate, but its out-datedness is sometimes 
cast as a triumph of common sense needs.)

I wasn't playing too close attention to Krimel and Magnus' discussion, 
but it appeared as if Krimel was lobbying on the side of common 
language and Magnus on the side technical community.  But when 
you put the point in terms of dynamics between these two things, I'm 
not sure either Krimel or Magnus would disagree, just perhaps in 
where the energy should now be applied.  Maybe.

Matt