On accuracy, and then some, part 2

[doc_strange]

Presented with foundational discussion (a process called "defining terms" that most scientists find of rather high utility, nudge nudge), and perhaps coupled with a careful argument for the adoption of the terms, new terms help us more accurately communicate. Indeed, saddled with less social/historical baggage and ever-more-vague use than day to day terms, they allow one to frame a discussion such that players from vastly different camps can actually talk about more or less the same sets of experiences -- social, physical, psychological, and historical.

That's Weds' precision notion, I am guessing, in a coconut shell. The terms tossed out in the nonsense debates are vague to the point of frustration for people actually trying to communicate. There certainly are so-called politically correct terms that are so vague as to be useless except as political rocks in any discussion. Indeed, all the newsworthy political correctness debates were about such terms on both sides. Some of the older terms (which aren't really SO old in their present uses, when examined) are also frustratingly vague if you actually want to discuss what's actually going on, rather than throw political rocks. Weds in fact starts her discussion with her recent experience of such terms.

I gather Weds wonders if the two terms are (in UK, Cambridge, I gather) "acceptable racism" because they group people inaccurately (as it turns out), are built on certain inaccurate historical writing about those people (as it turns out), and because they are laden with much inaccurate fictional portrayal of those people (as it turns out). And because the people using the term really don't care about that inaccuracy, possibly because there is no regular social experience that would make them care about the terms -- while politically, socially, historically, and perhaps scientifically, Canadians experience such issues with far greater frequency.

That is, if you're talking about a real person you've met on Baffin Island who is of dozens of generations of local descent, saying "Eskimo" will almost certainly conjure up terms and images that you're not talking about. Indeed, if you're a cultural anthropologist or geneticist talking to another person in the same profession, even the term Inuit may be too vague, and you may have to lay some foundational bounds to the term to ensure you're both on the same page, but at least the term doesn't come with (for the moment) too much inaccurate data attached.

Of course, in time, new terms will accrue such baggage, and the need to define terms will occur even in professional discussion.

That is, assuming they actually want to communicate about something.