Dojan comments on Disguised Queries - Less Wrong

57 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 February 2008 12:05AM

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Comment author: Dojan 02 November 2011 08:39:08AM 0 points [-]

When I have discussions of the philosophical kind, I have learned that it often pays of to start with defining the words being used: For example, I recall one discussion where I defined Evil as a shorthand for "all corporations and institutions that try to compete by opposing the existence and legitimacy of competitors and newcomers instead of by trying to offer a better product, like Microsoft", and one other discussion where I defined Evil as "Working for Sauron or Saruman or Morgoth", i.e very different. I would never (that is, I try hard not to) use a word such as evil without defining it first: People are all to likely to think of something other than what I meant.