“Please reconsider your use of adjectives” by Alfredo Parra 🔸

EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time, and @titotal's recent post finally made me do it:

Thick red dramatic box emphasis mine.

I was going to post a comment in his post, but I think this topic deserves a post of its own.

My plea is simply: Please, oh please reconsider using adjectives that reflect a negative judgment (“bad”, “stupid”, “boring”) on the Forum, and instead stick to indisputable facts and observations (“I disagree”, “I doubt”, “I dislike”, etc.).

This suggestion is motivated by one of the central ideas behind nonviolent communication (NVC), which I’m a big fan of and which I consider a core life skill. The idea is simply that judgments (typically in the form of adjectives) are disputable/up to interpretation, and therefore can lead to completely unnecessary misunderstandings and hurt feelings:

• Me: Ugh, the kitchen is dirty again. Why didn’t you do the dishes [...]

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First published:
June 21st, 2025

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Fkh2Mpu3Jk7iREuvv/please-reconsider-your-use-of-adjectives

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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