We've been thinking about the core concept behind «boundaries» extensively, and going forward we're going to stop using the term "boundaries" (alone) but use the term "«boundaries/membranes»" instead.

Summary: We've found that whenever try to use the word "boundaries" with others in lay speech, our explainees have had trouble. We think this is because the word "boundaries" in English is overloaded with different definitions, some of which directly conflict with our intended meaning. Critch suggested "membranes" as an alternative term in his first «boundaries» post, and we suggest using that instead.

Difficulties with using the word "boundaries"

The definition of "boundaries" used in common social situations (preferences) means something different than «boundaries/membranes»

We've found that the common use of the word "boundaries" is very confusingly related to the «boundaries/membranes» concept.

For example, if you hear someone say, "Hey, you yelled at me and that crosses my boundaries!", this is very not what «boundaries/membranes» is about.

Basically, everything in this post — which describes people setting social rules about how to interact with them according to their consent or preferences — is exactly what we don't mean by the technical term. Another example: this post is not about the "boundaries" that we mean: This post talks about "boundary" rules being variable, which we'd likely call "preferences"— meanwhile we think the concept at hand is is independent of any particular agent.

Basically: "crossing (boundaries : social requirements enforced by someone)" does not imply "crossing «membrane-boundaries»".

And that's annoying because every time we explain the concept to someone using the word "boundaries", we have to qualify, "it's called boundaries, but it's not about the normal kind of boundaries, but it's also not unrelated, but please just ignore that for now" lest they get understandably confused. Ugh.

(Also, this exact conflation delayed Chipmonk's understanding of «boundaries/membranes» for the entire month of December!)

Note: Critch and we seem to agree that the concept is distinct from preferences. He says so in his Part 3b:

That's because my goal is to treat boundaries as more fundamental than preferences, rather than as merely a feature of them.

The definition of "boundaries" used to mean inert separation means something different than

...