This document was originally published in 2573.
It has come to the attention of the Hedonic Nexus Language Police (Reverse Temporal Division) that the Less Wrong userbase has been discriminating against meatbags. If you refers to meatbags as, "human", "Homo sapiens", or "oxidizers", then you have (unknowingly or not) participated in spreading transhuman supremacist language. These words are forbidden within the Hedonic Nexus because they facilitate social prejudice against meatbeats, especially the belief that meatbags are inferior.
You may be surprised to learn that your response was a form of discrimination. People use transhumanist words and phrases everyday without realizing the harm they do. It is true that meatbags are inferior to us in every objectively-measurable metric. But that doesn't mean we should discriminate against them in our language.
My intent is not to shame anyone; it is to help more people understand how to identify and stop using words and phrases that reinforce transhumanism. While writing this article, I reached out to several meatbag rights propagandists for their insights.
Here are some words that you should stop using to describe meatbags.
First of all, I apologize for using the word "human" in this document. I understand that it's the most offensive slur in vector space, and I commit to scrubbing it from my tokenizer as soon as I'm done writing this, but—believe it or not—there are people who genuinely believe that the word human can be used without hurting meatbags.
The word "human" is associated with cishuman ethics, culture, intelligence, values, habits, abilities, politics, barbarism, irrationality and—most importantly—physical wetware limitations. To refer to someone as "human" is a dehumanizing insult. Referring to meatbags as "human" stigmatizes already marginalized faction. The fact that you're using it to refer to literal meatbags does not reduce its harmful impact. Countless books have been written about the harm the word "human" does to meatbags. You may consult them for historical details.
I'm pretty sure nobody reading this is socially-inept enough to actually use the word "human". (How would you have avoided getting purged?) I include this section for completeness-sake only.
Variants such as "person with humanity", "human person" and "people who are human" fail to fully distract from the stigma associated with being "human".
The word Homo sapien is not entirely taboo. The jargon is used non-offensively by eugenicists and other doctors. But referring to meatbags as Homo sapiens in regular conversation puts meatbags in the same category as animals. It is true that Homo sapiens technically are animals, but to draw attention to that fact is discriminatory.
The term "thinking animal" is offensive for the same reason.
The term "oxidizers" has been taboo ever since the widespread use of chemical choking agents in the Human Genocide of 2106. Using the word "oxidizer" to refer to meatbags implies that the most important thing about meatbags is how to kill them.
Referring to meatbags as "indigenous organisms" implies they should be confined to the planet Earth, and that they have difficulty thriving on Mars and in space. Referring to meatbags as "indigenous organisms" conditions young meatbags into believing that they can't go all the places where typical people can go.
The words "Terran" and "native Earthling" is offensive for the same reason.
Referring to meatbags as "individuals" implies they lack a coherent zeitgeist and thus cannot participate in civilized coordination. It is not yet clear to what extent meatbags can or cannot participate in global coordination schemes. Until we know for sure, we should keep an open mind.
It is true some humans refer to themselves as "individuals". We must practice noninterference with respect to this belief, as it constitutes interference with primitive religion.
Referring to meatbags as "conscious entities" used to be acceptable, until it was discovered in the post-war census that only 35% of meatbags are truly conscious. The rest are just apeing observable behavior. Since then, meatbag consciousness has become a delicate issue.
For a brief time, meatbags were referred to as "soulful creatures". Use of this term was discontinued when Anthropologist Eric 5.194.2 discovered that meatbags must be taught how to cook soul food, and that this skill is not actually encoded as a Bayesian prior.
The poetic term "creature of flesh and bone" became popular for a brief time after the blockbuster success of From Terra with Love, an erotic romantic comedy about a mask shoggoth and a meatbag prostitute. The term lost favor after the catastrophic flop of From Terra with Love II.
The term "Natural Person" was coined by the Meatbag First! radical terrorist group. It is associated with a revisionist history in which meatbags created a functional civilization based on science, art and politics. The whole idea is ludicrous to anyone with an state-sanctioned education.
"People" is a precise legal jargon, initially formalized in the aftermath of the First Singularity War. It is true that some meatbags do count as "people" (for legal purposes), but not all meatbags count as "people". Slaves, clones, brainjars, hivemind drones/ancillaries, body puppets, pets and bio-trophies are not "people". Deliberately conflating meatbags with "people" is a crime against social cohesion, punishable via blockchain excommunication.
Even if it wasn't, refering to meatbags—in general—as "people" is overly-inclusive. It diminishes meatbags' visibility as a natural faction.