NQbass7 comments on The Most Frequently Useful Thing - Less Wrong

11 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 28 February 2009 06:43PM

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Comment author: NQbass7 01 March 2009 09:57:14PM 2 points [-]

Having particular names which may not be in common usage makes it easier for me to identify the things that I've picked up from OB that are now a part of me. Cached Thoughts, Inferential Distance, Mind-Projection Fallacy - those are all terms I use now when referring to things that are a part of me, but not many other people use those terms often. It makes it somewhat easier to identify those things.

Comment author: AnnaSalamon 02 March 2009 01:50:45AM 6 points [-]

Yes -- and easier to invoke the principles in social contexts. I suspect Eliezer's OB posts gain a significant fraction of their usefulness from the names and from the chunk-by-chunk useability of the named principles/methods.

Comment author: badger 02 March 2009 03:05:18AM 2 points [-]

I agree. I find it funny that you lead your list of examples with "cached thoughts", because that exactly what these are. Not that that's a bad thing.

If that's the case though, maybe we need to be proactive in preventing them from becoming cached thoughts of the bad kind. Eliezer's posts serve as a good introduction, but I don't think they are the ideal reference. Maybe a rationalist dictionary would do the trick. I envision something like urban dictionary where multiple definition/explanations can be submitted and voted on.