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Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

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Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#101

Post by greggsy »

FabHK wrote: post #92
MichaelZuo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misquoted. The actual meaning is weakness of will to act according to one's better judgement. From the wiki article ""lacking command" or "weakness", occasionally transliterated as acrasia or Anglicised as acrasy or acracy) is a lack of self-control, or acting against one's better judgment."

It's "(weakness of will to act) against one's better judgement", or "weakness of will (to act according to one's better judgment)".

Seems similar to the experience of those with executive function disorders, where the sufferer knows that they should be doing an important task, but they prioritise some other less important but more engaging or satisfying task. (In other words: procrastination.)

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#102

Post by drBonkers »

HKH2 wrote: post #98
Cpoll wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of those are contextual, but "ought to be done" is certainly future tense, it's referring to a future activity. It's a pretty apt example for future passive, juxtaposing the future active "will be done." Or at least that's how I reason it. English is rather hard to analyze sometimes.

'something ought to be done' is also contrasted with 'something is done'. It's no different to 'should' in that regard. "I am having a party next week." That's a present continuous sentence referring to a future activity. Some argue that English doesn't even have a future tense. For these things it certainly is lacking, along with German it seems.

> 'something ought to be done' is also contrasted with 'something is done'. It's no different to 'should' in that regard.

Ought and should express objective and subjective opinion respectively.

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#103

Post by kalimanzaro »

adverbly wrote: post #13

I've always liked "akrasia" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrasia > Weakness of will to act against one's own better judgement. It's everywhere in modern society, and I'd love to see it called out more.

It's not just everywhere, it's said to be a dominant form of government, acracy (as opposed to mere anarchy)

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#105

Post by TobyTheDog123 »

I was lucky enough to study Greek for two years in high school -- a lot of the early books of the Iliad focus around the concept of xenia (though unfortunately I don't remember the exact books we translated)

https://classicalwisdom.com/culture/literature/the-odyssey-b...

I hope Greek is still being taught, it's quite the puzzle.

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#106

Post by alisonatwork »

pjungwir wrote: post #25

These are great suggestions. Adding these words to your own internal vocabulary is totally worth it for self-reflection. Less seriously, a grammatical construction I wish we had in English is the Latin future passive participle, typically ending in -ndus, -nda, -ndum. It means that something needs/ought to be done. For instance "Amanda" is "she who must be loved." So if someone asks you why your feature isn't in prod…

I've mentioned this before on HN, but one example of this I saw in the field was "abc_delenda" tables, which contain ids or records to be deleted. The naming appeared unnecessarily obscure to me at the time, but I find myself going back to it in subsequent jobs because it is a nice and concise way to express the intent.

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#107

Post by spockz »

alisonatwork wrote: post #106
pjungwir wrote: post #25

These are great suggestions. Adding these words to your own internal vocabulary is totally worth it for self-reflection. Less seriously, a grammatical construction I wish we had in English is the Latin future passive participle, typically ending in -ndus, -nda, -ndum. It means that something needs/ought to be done. For instance "Amanda" is "she who must be loved." So if someone asks you why your feature isn't in prod…

I've mentioned this before on HN, but one example of this I saw in the field was "abc_delenda" tables, which contain ids or records to be deleted. The naming appeared unnecessarily obscure to me at the time, but I find myself going back to it in subsequent jobs because it is a nice and concise way to express the intent.

What about `abc_trash(can)`? Although I like delenda better.

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#108

Post by quijoteuniv »

adverbly wrote: post #13

I've always liked "akrasia" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrasia > Weakness of will to act against one's own better judgement. It's everywhere in modern society, and I'd love to see it called out more.

And there you go 12 ways to name your new software :D. My favorite (not in there) is ‘metanoia’ and it explains a bit the humanity current status

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#109

Post by jdthedisciple »

phs318u wrote: post #97
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called out quite a lot, just not literally with the word akrasia . When it is called out, you're being "judgemental" or restricting someone's freedom/autonomy, which is of course sacrosanct to moderns.

Those responding in such a way are not in fact acting against their better judgement - they lack a judgment better than the one they have, therefore the criticism is moot.

Not true. Often they really do have a better judgement but choose to be offended when called out.

Re: Ancient Greek terms worth reviving

#110

Post by jdthedisciple »

woodruffw wrote: post #94
pjungwir wrote: post #25

These are great suggestions. Adding these words to your own internal vocabulary is totally worth it for self-reflection. Less seriously, a grammatical construction I wish we had in English is the Latin future passive participle, typically ending in -ndus, -nda, -ndum. It means that something needs/ought to be done. For instance "Amanda" is "she who must be loved." So if someone asks you why your feature isn't in prod…

> These are kind of lame examples, but once you get the idea you can find places where it'd be convenient several times a day. I, for one, find myself wishing for the destruction of Phoenician cities multiple times a day[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est

"Ceterum censeo Charthaginem esse delendam."
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