TheAncientGeek comments on Why Don't Rationalists Win? - Less Wrong

6 Post author: adamzerner 05 September 2015 12:57AM

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Comment author: TheAncientGeek 07 September 2015 09:34:25AM 1 point [-]

It only creates a common vocabulary amongst a subculture. LW vocabulary relabels a lot of traditional rationality terms.

Comment author: Vaniver 07 September 2015 01:48:13PM 4 points [-]

LW vocabulary relabels a lot of traditional rationality terms.

Has anyone put together a translation dictionary? Because it seems to me that most of the terms are the same, and yet it is common to claim that relabeling is common without any sort of quantitative comparison.

Comment author: Good_Burning_Plastic 11 September 2015 08:22:45AM 13 points [-]

Huh, lemme do it.

Schelling fencebright-line rule

Semantic stopsignthought-terminating cliché

Anti-inductivenessreverse Tinkerbell effect

"0 and 1 are not probabilities"Cromwell's rule

Tapping out → agreeing to disagree (which sometimes confuses LWers when they take the latter literally (see last paragraph of linked comment))

ETA (edited to add) → PS (post scriptum)

That's off the top of my head, but I think I've seen more.

Comment author: ScottL 11 September 2015 12:39:36PM *  5 points [-]

Thanks for this. Let me know if you have any others and I will add them to this wiki page I created: Less Wrong Canon on Rationality. Here are some more that I already had.

  • Fallacy of gray → Continuum fallacy
  • Motivated skepticism → disconfirmation bias
  • Marginally zero-sum game → arms race
Comment author: Jiro 11 September 2015 03:48:14PM 7 points [-]
Comment author: [deleted] 19 September 2015 05:03:45PM *  3 points [-]

Funging Against -> Considering the alternative

Akrasia -> Procrastination/Resistance

Belief in Belief -> Self-Deception

Ugh Field ->Aversion to (I had a better fit for this but I can't think of it now)

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 13 September 2015 02:49:23PM 1 point [-]

Instrumental/terminal = hypothetical/categorical

rationalist taboo = unpacking.

Comment author: helldalgo 02 December 2015 07:46:12AM 0 points [-]

Instrumental and terminal are pretty common terms. I've seen them in philosophy and business classes.

Comment author: Vaniver 11 September 2015 02:16:10PM 1 point [-]

Thanks for the list!

I am amused by this section of Anti-Inductiveness in this context, though:

Not that this is standard terminology - but perhaps "efficient market" doesn't convey quite the same warning as "anti-inductive". We would appear to need stronger warnings.

Comment author: Viliam 10 September 2015 08:32:02PM *  3 points [-]

Has anyone put together a translation dictionary?

It was many times debated on LW whether LW needlessly invents new words for already existing terms, or whether the new words label things that are not considered elsewhere.

I don't remember the outcomes of those debates. It seems to me they usually went like this:

"LW invents new words for many things that already have standard names."
"Can you give me five examples?"
"What LW calls X is called Y everywhere else." (provides only one example)
"Actually X is not the same concept as Y."
"Yes it is."
"It is not."
...

So I guess at the end both sides believe they have won the debate.

Comment author: Jiro 12 October 2015 02:43:05PM 1 point [-]

I just ran into this one because it became used in a reddit thread: in this post Eliezer uses the term "catgirl" to mean a non-sentient sexbot. While that isn't a traditional rationality term, I think it fits the spirit of the question (and predictably, many people responded to the Reddit thread using the normal meaning of "catgirl" rather than Eliezer's.)

Comment author: satt 13 September 2015 12:24:02PM 1 point [-]
Comment author: btrettel 11 September 2015 08:19:35PM 0 points [-]

RationalWiki discusses a few:

Another problem of LessWrong is that its isolationism represents a self-made problem (unlike demographics). Despite intense philosophical speculation, the users tend towards a proud contempt of mainstream and ancient philosophy[39] and this then leads to them having to re-invent the wheel. When this tendency is coupled with the metaphors and parables that are central to LessWrong's attraction, it explains why they invent new terms for already existing concepts.[40] The compatibilism position on free will/determinism is called "requiredism"[41] on LessWrong, for example, and the continuum fallacy is relabeled "the fallacy of gray." The end result is a Seinfeldesque series of superfluous neologisms.

In my view, RationalWiki cherry picks certain LessWrongers to bolster their case. You can't really conclude that these people represent LessWrong as a whole. You can find plenty of discussion of the terminology issue here, for example, and the way RationalWiki presents things makes it sound like LessWrongers are ignorant. I find this sort of misrepresentation to be common at RationalWiki, unfortunately.

Comment author: Kawoomba 11 September 2015 08:56:48PM 15 points [-]

Their approach reduces to an anti-epistemic affect-heuristic, using the ugh-field they self-generate in a reverse affective death spiral (loosely based on our memeplex) as a semantic stopsign, when in fact the Kolmogorov distance to bridge the terminological inferential gap is but an epsilon.

Comment author: Good_Burning_Plastic 18 September 2015 08:30:13PM 3 points [-]

You know you've been reading Less Wrong too long when you only have to read that comment twice to understand it.

Comment author: XFrequentist 12 September 2015 07:08:50PM 1 point [-]

I got waaay too far into this before I realized what you were doing... so well done!

Comment author: Kawoomba 12 September 2015 08:22:30PM 0 points [-]

What are you talking about?

Comment author: nyralech 13 September 2015 05:00:20PM 0 points [-]

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by Kolmogorov distance.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 September 2015 02:04:02PM 0 points [-]

Well yes. And I fully support LW moving towards more ordinary terminology. But it's still good to have someone compiling it all together.