ata comments on Help! Name suggestions needed for Rationality-Inst! - Less Wrong
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Unfortunately that's not even a very good phrase to begin with, let alone as a name for an organization. People hearing it for the first time without context mostly seem to assume that refers to reproduction, presumably by comparison to the phrase "be fruitful and multiply", or at least have that come to mind and are confused about what it has to do with rationality.
Yes, I recall being very confused when I first saw that phrase in Three Worlds Collide. To this day I don't know why people use "multiply" instead of "calculate".
I have always assumed it derived from modeling expected-value calculations as the product of likelihood-of-scenario and value-of-scenario.
Shut Up and Calculate's Katas would SUCK.
The phrase is in fact a mutation of "Shut up and calculate", a common stance pragmatical physicists take towards discussions of the interpretation of quantum mechanics.