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Vaniver comments on Making Rationality General-Interest - Less Wrong
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Comments (117)
I'm not sure this is avoidable, because precise concepts need precise terms. One of my favorite passages from Three Worlds Collide is:
That is the sort of concept which should be one short phrase in a language used by people who evaluate hypotheses by Bayesian thinking. Inaccessibility of jargon is oftentimes a sign of real inferential distance- someone needs to know what those two concepts are mathematically for that sentence-long explanation of a single phrase to make any sense, and explaining what those concepts are mathematically is a lecture or two by itself.
(That said, I agree that in areas where a professional community has a technical term for a concept and LW has a different technical term for that concept, replacing LW's term with the professional community's term is probably a good move.)
It seems to me that while intelligence is not sufficient for rationality, it might be necessary for rationality. (As rationality testing becomes more common, we'll be able to investigate that empirical claim.) I often describe rationality as "living deliberately," and that seems like the sort of thing that appeals much more to people with more intellectual horsepower because it's much easier for them to be deliberate.
I agree with you on the jargon thing; it's so much easier to have a conversation about rationality-cluster with LW people because of it. (It's also fun and ingroupy). But I do think it's a problem overall, and partly avoidable.
We really should have a short phrase for that. Suggestions? "The evidence would be likely given the hypothesis, but the hypothesis isn't as likely given the evidence" would at least be a bit shorter.
I would probably express it as something like "you're confusing a high likelihood with a high posterior," which is less precise but I suspect would be understood by a Bayesian.