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Nominative determinism in hospital medicine (2015)

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Re: Nominative determinism in hospital medicine (2015)

#31

Post by goldenkey »

mtVessel wrote: post #8
davesque wrote: post #3

Only slightly related, it recently occurred to me while journaling that the dictates of English grammar do a fair bit of work in forming opinions. You might think you believe one thing, but when you set about describing it, the linguistic choices have a subtle influence over the content of your statements. Over the entirety of an exposition, that influence can amount to a significant shift in meaning. I guess that's…

Also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

And here I thought Worf from Star Trek had authored it :-)

Re: Nominative determinism in hospital medicine (2015)

#32

Post by kiddico »

azalemeth wrote: post #21

Some doctors I know have done this almost deliberately. My favourite is probably Dr Wombwell... who decided to become a gynaecologist.

It just seems like a crime to not lean into a name like that.

It does make me wonder how someone ends up with a surname like that. I'd assume from the same profession cast back a few years.

Re: Nominative determinism in hospital medicine (2015)

#33

Post by nefitty »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #10

I once had my car towed by a person with the last name "Pullum". If the Universe really is some kind of Simulation, I suspect the QA's are getting lazy with the NPC names. Because that's EXACTLY how I name fake persons in unit tests. A police officer named Buddy Kopp, a traffic engineer named John Lane, a bbq pitmaster named Tray Burnham, etc.

It's almost certainly a simulation. If you live in apartments, how often have you seen your neighbors do laundry or bring home groceries?

There's also this (short clip, start at 2:00). Note the reference to "The Big Lie": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs6UcgiDwg0&t=120

A 1953 German book's leader of Mars is called the "Elon": https://twitter.com/tobyliiiiiiiiii/status/13441550614258237...

I think Roko's Basilisk will turn out to be true within the next few decades.

Re: Nominative determinism in hospital medicine (2015)

#34

Post by ashearer »

davesque wrote: post #3

Only slightly related, it recently occurred to me while journaling that the dictates of English grammar do a fair bit of work in forming opinions. You might think you believe one thing, but when you set about describing it, the linguistic choices have a subtle influence over the content of your statements. Over the entirety of an exposition, that influence can amount to a significant shift in meaning. I guess that's…

While I can't say how much effect grammar has on thought processes, the metaphors we rely on can be significant. For an example that came up earlier today (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29923866), the term "sanitizing" is often used to mean escaping data. But this way of thinking appears to create a strong urge to "sanitize" as soon as possible, so that the rest of the system will only have to handle "clean" data. This leads to mistakes: data is escaped on input, and therefore tends to be wrong for all but one of several output formats (possibly resulting in security vulnerabilities). And then because data from trusted sources is implied to be "clean", it isn't escaped at all, even when it will wind up being parsed incorrectly. Discarding this metaphor could actually result in better software.

Re: Nominative determinism in hospital medicine (2015)

#35

Post by stevula »

kiddico wrote: post #32
azalemeth wrote: post #21

Some doctors I know have done this almost deliberately. My favourite is probably Dr Wombwell... who decided to become a gynaecologist.

It just seems like a crime to not lean into a name like that. It does make me wonder how someone ends up with a surname like that. I'd assume from the same profession cast back a few years.

Wombwell is apparently the name of a town in England. According to the wiki article it may have originally referred to a well owned by a certain Womba (in Anglo-Saxon times I assume).

Re: Nominative determinism in hospital medicine (2015)

#36

Post by quacked »

nefitty wrote: post #33
BitwiseFool wrote: post #10

I once had my car towed by a person with the last name "Pullum". If the Universe really is some kind of Simulation, I suspect the QA's are getting lazy with the NPC names. Because that's EXACTLY how I name fake persons in unit tests. A police officer named Buddy Kopp, a traffic engineer named John Lane, a bbq pitmaster named Tray Burnham, etc.

It's almost certainly a simulation. If you live in apartments, how often have you seen your neighbors do laundry or bring home groceries? There's also this (short clip, start at 2:00). Note the reference to "The Big Lie": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs6UcgiDwg0&t=120 A 1953 German book's leader of Mars is called the "Elon": https://twitter.com/tobyliiiiiiiiii/status/13441550614258237... I think Roko's Basilisk wi…

The groceries thing is funny, but it's really just "what's the likelihood that in X years of living in the same place, your random 5 minutes out of the week are the same as your neighbor's random 5 minutes of the week".

Re: Nominative determinism in hospital medicine (2015)

#38

Post by vba616 »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #10

I once had my car towed by a person with the last name "Pullum". If the Universe really is some kind of Simulation, I suspect the QA's are getting lazy with the NPC names. Because that's EXACTLY how I name fake persons in unit tests. A police officer named Buddy Kopp, a traffic engineer named John Lane, a bbq pitmaster named Tray Burnham, etc.

"The possibility of gravitational waves was discussed in 1893 by Oliver Heaviside"

I was trying to find a motel once and was directed onto "Sample Rd". The street was real, but when I got to the supposed location of the motel, I didn't see anything.

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