Nisan comments on Open thread, October 2011 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: MarkusRamikin 02 October 2011 09:05AM

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Comment author: lessdazed 14 October 2011 01:53:03AM *  6 points [-]

People are bothered by some words and phrases.

Recently, I learned that the original meaning of "tl;dr" has stuck in people's mind such that they don't consider it a polite response. That's good to know.

Some things that bother me are:

  • Referring to life extension as "immortality".
  • Referring to AIs that don't want to kill humans as "friendly".
  • Referring to AIs that want to kill humans as simply "unfriendly".
  • Expressing disagreement as false lack of understanding, e.g. "I don't know how you could possibly think that."
  • Referring an "individual's CEV".
  • Referring to "the singularity" instead of "a singularity".

I'm not going to pretend that referring to women as"girls" inherently bothers me, but it bothers other people, so it by extension bothers me and I wouldn't want it excluded from this discussion.

Some say to say not "complexity" or "emergence".

Comment author: Nisan 16 October 2011 01:05:09AM 3 points [-]

Expressing disagreement as false lack of understanding, e.g. "I don't know how you could possibly think that."

This, more than the others, is a sign of a pernicious pattern of thought. By affirming that someone's point of view is alien, we fail to use our curiosity, we set up barriers to communication, and we can make any opposing viewpoint seem less reasonable.

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