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Manfred comments on Stuff That Makes Stuff Happen - Less Wrong
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Comments (127)
The origins of the word aren't very relevant to its current meaning; almost no one on this site would have known those origins before now and so those origins don't have much influence on the way we think about the word now. The standard understanding of koans that dominates pretty much everywhere is in line with what Doriana quotes.
Using the word koan is inaccurate. I think Yudkowsky is either trying to do it to associate feelings of mystic power with rationality, or to attack feelings of mystic power by setting up expectations and then destroying those; I don't have any idea which. But it somewhat annoys me. It's not a huge deal, but it's annoying.
I'm all for repurposing words, but only if there's a decent justification to do so and I don't see one here.
If you'll allow me to take this a bit out of context, please think of typical Zen usage as "origins of the word" and usage in this sequence of posts as "its current meaning."
The difference is obvious, of course - you know what the word means, and anything else is wrong. Which is totally fine. I just wanted to point out that if you try to make your conclusions universal or absolute here, you will in fact create more relativism - the solution is to claim the non-universal knowledge of how words should be used if you're the audience.