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↑ comment by Pattern · 2021-07-29T17:30:41.928Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This is how close mindedness reflect in the academic setting, like how Alex mentioned that quite a few physicists deem many topics, like philosophy, to be unworthy.
If we imagine there's good philosophy and bad philosophy, and the good philosophy is hard to find, then maybe people will write it off as 'not worth looking for' and spend their time on something else that's easier to get into or work with, whether that's physics or something else. It's certainly more easy for me to explain the benefits of physics/science than philosophy.
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2021-07-29T16:34:11.728Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
When we used to have a regular census the average IQ was something on the order of 140. While lack of intelligence isn't the only factor why someone might not understand the debate, I do expect that some people who came to LessWrong won't be smart enough to follow along.
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2021-06-08T17:13:42.113Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
All I'm saying is that you are asking for too much.
Whether or not it's "asking too much" depends on the goals. The goal of LessWrong is a place where high quality discussion happens that moves the art of rationality forward. Without high quality standards it's likely that the discussion gets diluted and LessWrong becomes less successful at it's goals.
Reading the sequences gathered together in Rationality: A-Z [? · GW]is a way to understand the basic background against which discussion on LessWrong happens.
As lsusr said, it's unfortunate this this is intimidating to new people but there's no good other strategy to reach a high quality level in a completely open forum that anybody can join no matter their thinking skills.
Replies from: TAG↑ comment by TAG · 2021-06-08T18:06:48.334Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Well...a lot of the jargon is completely unnecessary, posters generally don't make much effort to to contextualise things,the Sequences could be much shorter, since they are mostly wrong...or not-even-wrong..and so on.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2021-06-08T19:20:16.377Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It's certainly possible that quality could be improved in various ways, but that's an argument for increase certain quality standards and not lowering them.
Overloading existing terms with new meanings produces motte-and-bailey problems, especially when your term has slightly different meaning like the philosophers uses "principle of charity" in a different way then the people who coined the term over from philosophy of language where it has a different meaning. Nobody tries to separate the concept and thus you have a recipe for motte-and-bailey problems.
Using new words helps people to not just use old concept that are similar but make an attempt to understand the new concept that's slightly different. Every new scientific paradigm has their own vocabulary.
You might argue that we haven't yet a good scientific paradigm of rationality at LessWrong but I think we should aspire to it and that includes creating concepts and naming them.
Replies from: TAG↑ comment by TAG · 2021-06-08T19:30:49.924Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It’s certainly possible that quality could be improved in various ways, but that’s an argument for increase certain quality standards and not lowering them.
Who said anything about lowering quality standards? I'm explicitly calling for increasing them, and for increasing accessibility standards as well.
Merely being obscure indicates nothing about quality.
Every new scientific paradigm has their own vocabulary
Yes. If you have genuinely new ideas, you are entitled to coin new vocabulary. But much lesswrongian vocabulary can be mapped onto mainstream vocabulary. Its an unnecessary barrier.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2021-06-08T20:04:52.634Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Who said anything about lowering quality standards?
The OP towards which I responded.
But much lesswrongian vocabulary can be mapped onto mainstream vocabulary.
Thomas Kuhn gives an example that chemists and physicists have slightly different idea of what molecule means. It's a very similar concept but leads to different conclusions about whether an atom of helium is a molecule or not. If you talk cross disciplines this sets up misunderstands where nobody knows why the misunderstanding is there because everyone assumes they mean the same thing when they say molecule.
You avoid that by having new distinct terms. It makes it harder to engage with a discourse but it helps prevent misunderstandings.
Idea Inoculation is also worth worrying about. It was for a long time one of the reasons why CFAR didn't release their handbook. You reduce the effects of it by using new words.
It's also worth noting that many academic fields invent their own vocabulary even when existing terminology exists.
When it comes to the CFAR concept "tap" there's an NLP concept called "anchor" that's very similar and a psychology concept called "implementation intention" that's similar as well. In the timeline the NLP concept was first, then the psychology concept came into being, then the CFAR concept came into being. Academics are usually really bad at reusing existing terms from other knowledge communities.
If someone teaches me a fourth term for the same thing I don't think it's a problem but it's worth pointing out that the CFAR/NLP terms are both more practical to use as they are shorter and that matters for application. Each term also focuses on another aspect of the same concept which is interesting for it's usage.
Psychologists also seem to invented their own word for applied rationality after us and didn't use our term.
Not immediately rounding down to existing terms can be very useful in research conversation as argued in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kvLPC5YWgSujcHSkY/how-to-play-a-support-role-in-research-conversations [LW · GW]
Of course that doesn't mean that every usage of a new term is useful, but the tradeoffs are complex.
Replies from: TAG↑ comment by TAG · 2021-07-13T21:25:47.212Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I was referring more to Yudowsky's reinvention of philosophical terminology.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2021-07-13T21:31:10.392Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Most philosophical terminology has a bunch of different definitions from different authors and the terms have a lot of attached connotations.
There's principle of charity for example which comes out of philosophy of language and often gets used outside of that with a different meaning. By using a new term like steelmanning you can move past the conflation of concepts that the philosophers engage in.
Replies from: TAG↑ comment by TAG · 2021-07-14T18:36:31.780Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Most philosophical terminology has a bunch of different definitions from different authors and the terms have a lot of attached connotations.
The analytical tradition doesn't, or at least much less so. (And noting that a situation is bad is no excuse for making it worse).
And analytical philosophy is a major rival to rationalism inasmuch as it's a way of doing philosophy that's based on science and logic.
But it isnt a rival to rationalism inasmuch as rationalism is a thing where one guru-like amateur philosopher solves everything.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2021-07-15T12:05:37.832Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Take rationalism as you spoke about it. It's not a term with a single meaning. There the textbook definition from Baron that's close to the way we use the term in LessWrong. There's an older notion of it being about abstract reasoning. Reusing that term produces a lot of trouble.
I remember someone counting the number of distinct uses of is_a and coming out at 37.
Do you have specific examples in mind where you think there's an existing word with a single meaning?
↑ comment by Alex Hollow · 2021-07-29T16:44:09.111Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I would love to hear an example of this in more detail - I think I understand the things you are talking about but an example would help make sure.
Something I do in some conversations is use mathematical concepts like "normally distributed around X". I think this partially fits the thing you are talking about, but I find it has two additional benefits for conversation. First, it can help specify a topic more clearly and concisely for people that understand. And second, it can let people know that you know about math/stats and lets them start using similar terms in response, sometimes allowing conversations to go deeper fast because both parties know that the other party will understand more niche concepts that can be used for analogy.