Words we hear a lot but which people often get wrong
Politics
When London Mayor Sadiq Khan blocked an illegal contract between the Met Police and Palantir last week, Palantir’s UK viceroy, Louis Mosely, accused Khan of “putting politics over public safety.” Using politics as a dirty word is a favourite dog-whistle of the populist right, who define it narrowly as the superficial and insincere game of point-scoring and self-serving behaviour. This usage is revelatory and ultimately symptomatic of the disdain in which populists and fascists hold such ideals as freedom, justice, peace, and progress, i.e. the central concerns of politics. Because politics is not point-scoring or the pursuit of private gain, but rather the theory and practice (the “science” - see below) of life lived in community.
**Capitalism **
It is not uncommon to hear that we live in a capitalist society, in grateful contrast to something called a socialist or even communist society (where they?). But capitalism and communism are not strictly speaking opposites. Capitalism refers to a mode of economic life founded on the idea of private property and the right to exploit it privately. This mode of economic life is predicated on a social (or antisocial, rather) philosophy of “every man for himself”. Communism however is a social philosophy first and foremost, grounded in the understanding that we are all in this together. Thus the label “capitalist society” is an oxymoron, yet in a way very fitting, as fitting as bars to the window of a prison cell: clearly visible and easy to look past.
Efficiency
Efficiency means decreasing waste, and is therefore a question of value judgment. The pursuit of efficiency means finding ways to achieve a given goal with a lower outlay of resources, be it time, money, labour, fuel, etc. than had previously been attained. Efficiency thus describes the manner in which means are deployed in the pursuit of an end, and thus in practice the meaning or form which efficiency takes in any given case will look different depending on the end in question. In other words, efficiency is a careful balancing act, ensuring that the desired outcome of a process is not harmed by a change to the input. Of course, once we no longer care about - or are unable to judge - the quality of the output, it becomes a lot easier to cut input. However, maintaining merely the appearance of quality output while cutting input is not efficiency but expediency - or fraud.
Education
This word is often used to mean the process of learning things you didn’t already know, and then the question becomes what is it important to learn? This is of course wrong: the process of learning things you didn’t already know is simply called “learning” and happens often in spite of education.
Science
Science is a very hard word, and not only to spell. It conjures images of white coats, test tubes, computers, and maybe a microscope. It stands in curious relationship to its sibling, art. And it also conjures an aura of objective, disinterested, paternalistic authority, such as businessman co-founder of Anthropic Chris Olah sought to evoke in his recent address to the Papacy and the world with his simple sentence, “I am a scientist”, as if the unassailable moral significance of this phrase should wash over us all like a wave of calm. “Science” in its most basic, pared down meaning simply means knowledge: simultaneously the pursuit, possession, and practice of knowledge. In order to pursue knowledge one must first be aware that one does not have it. The true scientist knows nothing and is curious about everything. Christ Olah may indeed know nothing, but I submit that he is only truly curious about how to accrue further wealth and power, by hook or - as it were - by crook.
By Inigo Montoya
