The Euphemistic Treadmill

Michael Shellenberger discusses the euphemistic treadmill:

We stopped calling it psychopathy → now it’s “antisocial personality disorder” (DSM-5 change).

Why? Because the old word became “politically incorrect.”

Same pattern everywhere:

“Retarded” → “developmentally delayed” → new term needed soon

“Addict” → “person with substance use disorder”

“Mentally ill” → “person with mental health challenges”

It’s not about kindness.

It’s about control.

The people pushing these changes don’t actually care about the feelings of those they claim to protect — they care about gaining power in the conversation.

Continue ReadingThe Euphemistic Treadmill

Google’s Education Project

"Just the facts" does not apply to Google. This example by Mary Talley Bowden offered this simple example. It one recent example of many others on many topics. Google is programming us, not simply giving us the facts. They see their job as not telling you what there is, but how to think about what there is.

The comments offer dozens of other examples from Google and from other sites. I ran this same test on Google today at 11:40 am CT. Same result.

Continue ReadingGoogle’s Education Project