Don't try to use a scientific or legal definition of a word in an every day conversation

Mr Relativist: Let’s just say that “threaten” means “to smile at somebody”. After all, words can mean whatever you want.

Mr Realist (smiling): I’m threatening you right now.

Mr Relativist: Oh Jesus. I get your point. That sounds awful. I know I just said that “threaten” in this conversation now means smile, so you just said you’re smiling at me. But yikes. It just sounds like you’re. . . well, threatening me.

Moral of the story: you can’t just choose a different definition for a conversation if the word already has an everyday meaning.

It doesn’t matter if the scientific or legal or whatever definition of the word is different.

Human brains don’t work that way.

Now, this seems like a silly example because it is. But it was to illustrate the point in an obvious example so that you can see why it also doesn’t work for the way this usually comes up: scientific and legal definitions.

Examples (brackets includes the type of definition that differs greatly from everyday use):

• Fruits and vegetables (scientific)
• Genocide (legal)
• Racism (academic sociological)
• Seasons (scientific)
• Assault (legal)

Take for example “racism”. Sometimes people try to substitute the everyday definition of racism (aka disliking a person based on their race and treating them poorly because of that) to a more academic sociological definition (aka “systemic racism”, policies that cause unfair advantages to certain races).

You can see the problems that stem from this in two ways: both people get confused.

First off, the person being called racist gets upset because they think they’ve been accused of disliking and mistreating people of different races.

Secondly, the accuser gets confused, because they keep subconsciously slipping back to the everyday meaning of the term. Because after all, a person can’t be “a policy that causes an unfair advantage”. Their academic definition of racism is a word that can only apply to policies, not people.

But because the word “racism” is so deeply ingrained in everybody’s mind as the everyday use, it’s really hard to not accidentally keep thinking of it that way. Just like the person in the made up example above can’t just change how they think of the word “threatening”.

The solution to this problem is to use words with their everyday meaning, and only use scientific/legal/formal definitions in contexts where everybody knows the definition and are used to dealing with them that way.

You can’t just invoke the other definition in any old conversation.

If you are in a legal debate at the UN, by all means, use the legal definition of genocide. However, if you are arguing with people on Twitter about immigration or trans rights, don’t use the legal definition. People will think that you are talking about machetes and gas chambers, and they will get confused.

If somebody says “humans are monkeys!” online, don’t jump in and say “well actually, they’re apes!”. You’re not helping. Nobody cares about the scientific definition of monkeys online. Save that for academic conferences.

And if you’re a legal or scientific expert and you’re coining a new term, please please please actually make up new words or combine old words to make new ones. “Systemic racism” is a fine word as long as you always call it “systemic racism” and don’t try to just call it “racism”. That word is already taken. Find a new one.

And if you see somebody doing this to others online, just share this tweet with them. Then maybe we can start threatening each other more while debating online.

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