Dear Todd, I thank you for your message. Let me first congratulate you and your collaborators for the excellent work that you are doing in the nLab. The nLab is both easy to access and of high quality. It is really innovative. It is becoming an essential tool for many researchers in mathematics. I use it frequently myself. I hope that the controversy about the term "evil" will eventually find a solution. Let me recall a story from Samuel Eilenberg. When he and Henri Cartan wrote "Homological algebra" they were very careful not to use a temporary substitute for a term, when the terminology was undecided. They left blank the spaces in the manuscript where the missing term was needed. Because if you use a temporary substitute, Eilenberg explained, it does not take long before it sticks to your brain and you find it completely natural, even if it is wrong. Best, André -------- Message d'origine-------- De: Todd Trimble [mailto:trimble1@optonline.net] Date: dim. 26/09/2010 23:06 À: Joyal, André Cc: Categories list Objet : Re: categories: subculture Dear Andre, As someone who contributes to the nLab, let me assure you that opinions on the appropriateness of the word "evil" (in the sense being discussed here) also vary among workers in the nLab. Not all of the subscribers of this list may know about the nLab, but we are far from a homogeneous block. There are certainly regular nLab contributors who have voiced their displeasure with the word. I think you're right: the people who use this term are still a pretty small group. Nevertheless, sometimes slang terms do catch fire and become widespread, and evidently this has become a cause for alarm for some people here. While I won't take a position on the acceptability on the word myself, beyond saying that it's not likely to become part of my own language, I would at least like to defend its appearance in the nLab. To some extent, the nLab functions as a dictionary for those who work with categorical language (that is at least one of its functions). So one could view the people who edit the nLab as, in part, editors of a dictionary; as such, there is a kind of obligation to record uses of the living language and describe it as accurately as possible. Thus the function here is descriptive, not prescriptive (or proscriptive). That said, it's also true that reputable dictionaries will record how the word is received by speakers: some words may be described as 'vulgar' or 'offensive' (at least for some speakers), or as slang or substandard or whatever. So if a word like "evil" is offensive to some people here, it's arguably our responsibility to record that fact as well, and link to this discussion here. A case in point is the (I think tongue-in-cheek) expression "fascist functor". Some of you may recall that a "free functor" is to the "left" (in an adjoint string), so a "fascist functor" would be to the "right" in an adjoint string. It's a little jokey (as some people think "evil" is), and yet it still excites emotions, as we discovered in a recent nForum discussion. Something of those reactions were hinted at in the Lab, and I think we would do well to do the same with regard to "evil". Best, Todd [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]