It's CTists, not CTers.

Marquis de Carabas said:
CTers is linguistically correct.
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I'm ignoring Killtown's presence. I am - really! I mean it! This was a nice thread - a respite from the rigors of right-angle windshifts and neocryptic uniformed thugs planting explosives, and then Mr. Party Pooper has to show up. Go away, Killtown... Thanks. Go answer Hal, if you dare.

Back to our trivial thread.....

And the winner is ...... drum roll..... The Marquis (that's why he's nobility)!

It's like the use of a or an with an acronym. If you say (aloud or in your head) "unidentified flying object" you would use the "an". If you say/think U-F-O, you would us "a". If you doubt it, try saying "an U-F-O". When letters become a recognized acronym they take on a different set of rules, generally. CT has that status with us, so I'm tending towards the belief that it becomes a matter of comfort with how it sounds to the user. CT-ist just doesn't work for me.

And to be even more pedantic.... A theorist sounds like something serious and/or scholarly, I guess by association with physicist, biologist, scientist, etc.... I'd hate to give them even that slight connotation of having any sort of science or philosophy behind their work.

Couldn't we go back to the proper term: "Serious Whack Jobs" I'm also big on "Nutbar", "Fruitcake", and the ever-popular "Are You Smoking Crack?"
I'm personally promoting the idea that ridicule is perhaps the best way to attack the movement. I may start a thread on it. (Being a rookie one is reticent amongst all the skilled an erudite posters[or is that postists?], but I'll come out of my shell.)
 
I had a thought this morning at work. You actually be referring to PIN and VIN as systems, so a you would have a PIN number, if you meant PIN as a personal identification number system. Just calling it Personal Identification wouldn't define the system adequately, as it is a number based system, so PI number could suggest there are other elements to the PI system. Calling it a PIN number therefore indicates that it is a system of personal identification, relying on numbers, and that that is your number for using the system.

Yes I am digging a hole here, but it's easier to clutch at straws when they're all gathered in one place.
 
FOOLMEWUNZ said:
And the winner is ...... drum roll..... The Marquis (that's why he's nobility)!

It's like the use of a or an with an acronym. If you say (aloud or in your head) "unidentified flying object" you would use the "an". If you say/think U-F-O, you would us "a". If you doubt it, try saying "an U-F-O". When letters become a recognized acronym they take on a different set of rules, generally. CT has that status with us, so I'm tending towards the belief that it becomes a matter of comfort with how it sounds to the user. CT-ist just doesn't work for me.
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Thank you for recognising my intrinsic rightness, but your explanation is, I'm afraid, incorrect. The reason one uses an with unidentified flying object is because it starts with a vowel sound. UFO gets a because, though the letter U is a vowel, its pronunciation begins with a consonant.

It is not that an abbreviation (technically, CT is only an acronym if you say it seet or something) has different rules; it's that an abbreviation that enters the vernacular becomes, linguistically, a word in its own right. From that point, rules for words are applied directly to it, not indirectly through it from the phrase it abbreviates.

So, people who believe in conspiracy theories, given that a CT is a conspiracy theory, become CTers, much like the geologically challenged are Flat Earthers.
 
Marquis de Carabas said:
So, people who believe in conspiracy theories, given that a CT is a conspiracy theory, become CTers, much like the geologically challenged are Flat Earthers.
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That still doesn't explain why 'ers' is better than 'ists', even if we grant that 'CT' has entered our vocabularies in its own right. There is no rule regarding when 'ist' or 'er' should be applied to, say, professions, so I don't see how you've decided it's right here.

I think it's a very sensible approach to use CTist if you mean conspiracy theorist, and CTers if you mean conspiracy theorizers. And regarding which of those two has entered the language, as I said before, I think it's too early to tell (and given the recent uptake of CTist, I reckon it will become pretty popular).
 
Job title suffixes (-er vs -ist)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv177.shtml

The suffix '-ist' seems to be productive in English, based on the fact that we can easily coin novel words using the '-ist' suffix. However, the suffix '-ist' has multiple meanings in English, corresponding to (i) "advocate of", (ii) "user of/expert in", and (iii) "detractor of". Although use (iii) is probably only a recently developed use of this morpheme, it appears to be the most productive.
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http://www.ling.udel.edu/colin/courses/ling101_f99/lecture12.html

The American Heritage® Book of English Usage.
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.

8. Word Formation: Plurals, Possessives, Affixes, and Compounds

§ 26. -ist


The suffix -ist, which comes from the Greek suffix -istes, forms agent nouns, that is, nouns that denote someone who does something. Although -ist frequently forms agent nouns from verbs ending in -ize or nouns ending in -ism, it has also come to be combined with words that do not end in -ize or -ism. In fact in some cases -ist can be used much like the suffix -er. In pairs such as conformer/conformist, copier/copyist, and cycler/cyclist, -ist and -er may be used interchangeably.
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-er and -or form nouns which refer to a person who performs a particular action, often because it is their job. For example, a teacher is someone who teaches. -er and -or also form nouns which refer to tools and machines that form a particular action. For example, a mixer is a machine that mixes things.
...
-ist replaces '-ism' at the end of nouns to form nouns and adjectives. The nouns refer to the people who have particular beliefs. For example, a fascist is someone who supports fascism. The adjectives indicate that something is related to or is based on particular beliefs.
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Given all these, I am leaning towards CTist. *shrug*
 
Marquis, quietly now.... we don't want to stir the Library Lady....

The vowel thing was too obvious. I accepted that everyone would recognize the "why" of the use of an for a vowel, so left it out. The point is that the letter u is pronounced commencing with a "y" sound which works better with the smaller article, a.

Acronym, in the traditional definition is a word that can be sounded out (NATO, NORAD, SCUBA), but in common usage, dictionaries actually now include many such abbreviations (as they way we're using CT) as acronyms nowadays. I lost my old OED in a move - but I doubt they'd accept PDQ or CT as 'acronyms', so I'll concede the point.

Pesky Canadians! They learn you to talk and write real good up there!
(I'm an honorary Great White Norther --- my daughter was born in Montreal, I married a Cape Bretoner>)
 
tkingdoll said:
That still doesn't explain why 'ers' is better than 'ists',
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I didn't say it was. I merely said that the former was correct, and explained why. That does not automatically render possible alternates incorrect. I have no dog in this fight, and will happily use whichever comes to predominate. I merely could not let it be argued that -ist was more proper.
 
I like to just use CT and let the reader decide whether it stands for Theorist or Theoriser.
The main problem with all these CTs(speaking globally) that I can see, is that they leave out the UN.;)
 
Hehe.

I've always thought CTist is appropriate, but I think I've also used CTer on more than one occasion. I agree it may be too early to tell which will prevail, but there may be different occasions when one is more appropriate. For example, talking about a 9/11 only CTist, as opposed to a Moon Hoax/JFK/Reptilian/Illuminati/9-11/whole kit and kaboodle CTer. Maybe.


chipmunk stew said:
Rikzilla coined the term "CTards", which I rather like, but it's not very diplomatic...

How about 9/11 Revisionist? Not exactly the same ring, but hard to argue with.
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Hehehe. CTards. I rather like it too. Nice and mean. It might come in handy.
9/11 Revisionist? That's good. But not as quick to type.

defaultdotxbe said:
skeptics should be open to all possibilities, i have yet to meet a CTers who even considers the notion that they might be wrong
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Killtown said:
Funny, I feel the same way about OCTs.
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Yes, it must be frustrating being a CTist having such a lack of evidence and logic.

As far as I've seen, many "OCTs" have changed their minds and are now CTists. But statistics show that most people believe the official facts.
 
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Yes, I'm committing thread necromancy, and with good reason may I add. There are a couple of terms that I think need to be redressed and this is the most appropriate thread for them.

"9/11 Truth" - The use of this by CTists must be corrected. They have consistently shown observational and confirmational bias; and make it clear that they are working from their conclusion backwards. Every time this term is used it plants a subconscious seed; people remember the word "truth" without necessarily remembering it context. Therefore, when debating/discussing/etc the CTists movement, we should always use the terms "9/11 Denier/Denial", and/or "9/11 Revisionism/Revisionist". They act like Holocaust deniers and they should be labeled the same way.

The more important one is as follows:
Original/Official Version or Official Conspiracy Theory (OV, OCT) - I'm going to quote PM here as they summed it up best; from the Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts, pgs 94 & 95
Marginalization of Opposing Views
The 9/11 Truth Movement invariably describes the mainstream account of 9/11 as the "government version" or "the official version." In fact, the generally accepted account of 9/11 is made up of a multitude of sources: thousands of newspaper, TV, and radio reports produced by journalists from all over the world; investigations conducted by independent organizations and institutions, include the American Society of Civil Engineers, Purdue University, Northwestern University, Columbia University, the National Fire Protection Association, and Underwriters Laboratories, Inc.; eyewitness testimony from literally thousands of people; recordings and transcripts of phone calls, air traffic control transmissions, and other communications; thousands of photographs; thousands of feet of video footage; and, let's not forget the words of Osama bin Laden, who discussed the operation in detail on more than one occasion, including in an audio recording released in May 2006 that said: "I am responsible for assigning the roles of the 19 brothers to conduct these conquests ..."
The mainstream view of 9/11 is, in other words, a vast consensus. by presenting it instead as the product of a small coterie of insiders, conspiracists are able to ignore facts they find inconvenient and demonize people with whom they disagree.
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I would add to this, that by doing so, they are also able to implant the idea that their ideas are on equal footing, have equal value, and are in similar standing in the relevant fields of expertise. This behavior was summed up nicely in Daniel C. Dennett's essay The Hoax of Intelligent Design and How It Was Perpetrated in the book Intelligent Thought: Science Versus the Intelligent Design Movement pgs 39-41
The campaigners for intelligent design have become adept at feeding off the difficulty of this idea, by starting with a straightforward counterclaim and then retreating into the fog of technical confusion when their counterclaims are refuted. For instance, the philosopher William Dembski, one of the two most prominent ideologues of the ID movement, has attempted to argue that a particular sort of design product does require an intelligent designer, and that the designs found in nature include such products, but his various expressions of the argument to date, which depend on some rather abstruse mathematical formulations, have been show to be technically flawed. Few, if any, theoreticians give his project any hope of success, since the flaws they have uncovered are central to his thesis.
...
How can non-scientists assess their own judgement in this case? Not by trusting wishful thinking. If you can just see that Dembski must be onto something even thought you can't follow the mathematics, you are falling right into the trap. ... Perhaps, then, you should wait with bated breath on the sidelines while the experts duke it out in the scientific arena. This would be fine, except that Dembski has left the playing field and is appealing directly to the spectators, instead of contending with the scientists on their own terms.
In his trade books, magazine articles, and popular lectures, Dembski makes it appear that there is scientific controversy - but there isn't, as we can see by comparing his path with others. ... Instead, he and his cohorts use a ploy that works like this. First you misuse or misdescribe some scientist's work, provoking an angry rebuttal. Then, instead of dealing forthrightly with the charges leveled, you cite the rebuttal as evidence there is a "controversy" to teach.
Note that the trick is content-free. You can use it on any topic. ... And here is the delicious part:You can often exploit the very technicality of the issues to your own advantage, counting on most of us to miss the point amid all the difficult details. ... Clever! What looks to scientists - and is - a knockout objection by Dr. Schneider is portrayed to almost everyone else as ridiculous hairsplitting.
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Ehm... forget... missed that there where 3 pages to this thread.
 
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