Re: Gender Neutral Pronouns

From: Christian L. (n95lundc@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Mar 31 2001 - 12:05:46 MST


Elezier wrote:

>"Christian L." wrote:
> >
> > Point 2 is probably more important than you give it credit. Always
>remember
> > that humans are animals who make lots of decisions based on gut feeling.
> > Using "she" for AIs could influence the subconscious to think "mother
> > figure" instead of "dominant male competing for mates/resources" if you
>use
> > "he".
>
>Yes. I know. That's the problem. The ethical mode of memetic combat is
>to make the audience smarter, not dumber. That's what separates the
>truthsayers from the fearmongers. If I switched to "she" for the purpose
>you describe...

Well, the primary purpose was still to make the text easier to read, this
was only a bonus. Besides, failure to make the audience smarter right away
could result in a shocked/hostile audience. If you instead go with "she",
the target group might be more open to more information which might make
them smarter in the end.

Again: to me, the main reason to go with "she" is the reading.

I wrote in the past:

>Is there any way to get a zipped version of FAI, so I can read it while
>offline? This could be made available on the website to...
>

Oops. I take this back. I looked at FAI today, and it was about 7
html-documents. Not much to disturb you over. The reason that I wrote the
above was that I got freaked when I followed one of your links and found
that the subsubsections were separate documents.
Now I can play around with it and see how "she" looks in print.

/Christian
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