Robin2 comments on 37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong - Less Wrong

72 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 March 2008 05:09AM

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Comment author: Robin2 06 March 2008 07:43:31AM -1 points [-]

Hmm... while these are all useful guidelines for how to use words, but I don't think all of them define wrong ways of using words. For example "You use a short word for something that you won't need to describe often, or a long word for something you'll need to describe often. This can result in inefficient thinking, or even misapplications of Occam's Razor, if your mind thinks that short sentences sound "simpler"" Which sounds more plausible, "God did a miracle" or "A supernatural universe-creating entity temporarily suspended the laws of physics"? How is either of those sentences wrong? Sure one is longer than the other, but just because somebody doesn't know the word god or wants to explicitly define it doesn't mean they are wrong.

Ultimately, I think somebody can only be wrong when using a word if they contradict their own definition. Any other misusages are probably just using words inefficiently, rather than incorrectly.

Comment author: Rixie 10 April 2013 01:06:56PM 8 points [-]

Oh, the irony.

It doesn't matter that Eliezer defined the word "wrong" in a different way than you. You still understand what he means, there's no point to redefining "wrong" in this case.

Comment author: MugaSofer 10 April 2013 02:55:00PM 4 points [-]

"You use a short word for something that you won't need to describe often, or a long word for something you'll need to describe often. This can result in inefficient thinking, or even misapplications of Occam's Razor, if your mind thinks that short sentences sound "simpler"" Which sounds more plausible, "God did a miracle" or "A supernatural universe-creating entity temporarily suspended the laws of physics"? How is either of those sentences wrong? Sure one is longer than the other, but just because somebody doesn't know the word god or wants to explicitly define it doesn't mean they are wrong.

The point is that the longer sentence sounds less plausible. Using shorthand ("God" for "A supernatural universe-creating entity" and "miracle" for "temporarily suspended the laws of physics") makes the concept sound less improbable. Thus it is "wrong", in that it is a bad idea (supposedly.)