"Grammar Nazi"
As a teen, I considered myself a "Grammar Nazi". I would frequently correct people's grammar, asserting that I knew the one "right" way to speak.
In my early 20s, I learned about how (some) dictionaries are made. They look and see how words are actually used by regular people, then the dictionary records descriptions of what people mean when using those words.
I always thought language was prescriptive before that - an authoritative body says "this is the right way to use English" and then it was "smart" and "right" to use language that way.
Some dictionaries have worked this way historically, and there are writing guides that take a prescriptive approach, but I came to understand language differently. It was no longer a strict set of rules to be followed; language was a malleable thing created through everyday use by everyday people.
Those "rules" were just guidelines, suggestions. It was my choice whether I adhered to them or not. Other people get to make that same choice, and it doesn't have to be the same as mine.
Yesterday, I wrote about my thoughts on LLMs, and I took a tone of moral superiority, like I know what's "right" and what's "wrong". The stakes are higher when dealing with morals than with sentence structure, but I realized last night that it was a very similar mindset to my "Grammar Nazi" days.
I argued yesterday that it is immoral to use AI at all, because using it supports a deeply unethical system, even if the individual use isn't unethical in-and-of itself.
Morality is a tricky thing, because it depends on loads of underlying assumptions, and most actions in our modern world are deeply entangled with many complex systems.
Buying a tomato can be moral (good) because you're feeding yourself and your family, while being immoral (bad) because it depends on exploitative labor practices. But not buying a tomato means not feeding your family and letting a tomato go to waste - but hey, you didn't support exploitative labor practices!
Like I said, it's complicated.
But what is morality, anyway?
It's easy to feel there is an objective moral position sometimes, but just like dictionaries, I do not believe in a moral authority who prescribes what is right and wrong.
Morality really is just a set of personal values, and many decisions and actions don't fall perfectly in the "moral good" or "moral bad" camp, but often in some grey area, like with the tomatoes. Our values are often at odds with each other, and we have to make decisions about how to balance these conflicts.
I'd buy the tomato and feed my family, regardless of the downsides. I don't support exploitative labor, but I need to feed my family. (I don't have a family to feed, this is just a hypothetical)
So what does this mean with regard to my position on using AI? Quite frankly, I don't know.
I once had a reckoning with myself about being a "Grammar Nazi". And now I'm wondering if I need a similar reckoning with regard to morality.
But morality is not language, and morality has real-world consequences. I feel very strongly that the U.S. Government (ICE) should not murder people. I'm not going to say that my values on this are just "personal". I'm not going to let someone off the hook for feeling differently. I'm going to take the position of moral authority on that, and say that I'm "right" and if you disagree, then you're "wrong". I will not budge on this. I will not give grace on this. I will be prescriptive on this.
But on other issues, I'm not sure I'm comfortable taking such a strong stance about what's "right" and what's "wrong".
I've been having this same internal conflict with regard to eating animals. And now I'm having this internal battle about my prescriptive view regarding AI.
I thought I'd get to the bottom of my feelings in this post, and do some of that moral reckoning. But I've merely opened up some questions for me to explore. I'm curious where these thoughts will lead in the coming days, weeks, months, and years.
Will I have a reckoning about morality, like I did about language?