[lbo-talk] Orthogonal (Was: Sexual self-expression)

Curtiss Leung curtiss_leung at ibi.com
Tue Sep 21 11:39:39 PDT 2004


Ravi:
> "adult" removes the "pedophilia" orthogonality.
> "male" removes the "feminism" orthogonality.

If you by these you mean

"'adult' makes concerns of pedophilia irrelevant," and "'male' makes makes concerns of feminism irrelevant,"

then you should write

"'adult' makes 'pedophilia' orthogonal," and "'male' makes 'feminism' orthogonal."

Two vectors are orthogonal if neither of them can be expressed as a scalar multiple of the other. Synonymously, the vectors are said to be "linearly independent." Thus the casual use of orthogonal to mean "independent" or "irrelevant."

Therefore, this note is orthogonal to the thread on sexual self-expression.

Curtiss



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list