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Emile comments on Antijargon Project - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (29)
Coining new jargon words (neologisms) is an alternative to formulating unusually precise meanings of commonly-heard words when one needs to convey a specific meaning.
A Marxist may use the term "surplus value" to specifically mean the difference between a worker's productivity and wage. If they say "surplus value" to someone who does not recognize this specific meaning, that person may think the Marxist means "surplus" in the sense of "unnecessary excess". They may think the Marxist means that the worker's productivity is wasted, and respond accordingly. This may baffle the Marxist, who will point out that "surplus value" (in their sense) doesn't have much to do with "overproduction" (another word that has a specific meaning in Marxist economics).
Using neologisms has the advantage that it conveys readily, to someone unfamiliar with the neologism, that they are unfamiliar with it and need to ask for clarification. Using existing words with unusually precise meanings runs the risk of letting someone go past a misunderstood word without realizing that they are doing so.
I agree that the distinction between neologisms and overloading existing words is an important one (and your examples are good!) - but I think the ordinary understanding of "jargon" covers both.
If someone announces "I'm going to stop using jargon!", and goes on to say things like "steel man", "shut up and multiply", "dark arts", then most people will agree he failed. The list of LessWrong Jargon contains plenty of non-neologisms like that.
Neologisms are a bit more obvious, but even the distinction between somewhat rare words (like "neologism") and specialized jargon (like "overloading") is pretty fuzzy.
But no-one's going to assume that “steel man” refers to a man made of steel, or “dark arts” to arts of a dark colour, so they do qualify as neologisms in fubarobfusco's sense. (OTOH, I do seem to recall someone on LW or OB who had assumed that “shut up and multiply” was an exhortation to have lots of children, and went WTF.)
A lot of the LW sense of "dark arts" could be found in the mainstream expression "dirty tricks", which is slightly more general but not much: "cognitive dirty tricks" would be pretty clear. A significant part of both terms' meaning is that using the techniques so named is unethical or unfair on account of being manipulative of others.
I don't recall this incident, but if a newcomer came across an evolutionary psychology discussion and saw that expression, that would be the obvious interpretation!
ADBOC?