Eliezer's writing style of A->B, then A, then B, though generally clear, results in a large amount of redundancy.
In this post, I have attempted to reduce the number of rules needed to remember by half. The numbers are the rules from the original post.
So, without further ado, a good definition for a word:
- can be shown to be wrong37 and is not the final13 authority18 19
- has strong justifications33 for the word's existence32 and its particular definition,20 which leave no room for an argument17 22
- agrees with conventional usage4
- explains what context the word depends on36
- limits its scope to avoid overlap with other meanings25
- does not assume that definitions are the best way of giving words semantics12
- directs a complex mental paintbrush35 to paint detailed pictures of the thing you're trying to think about23
- is a brain inference aid13 that refers to and instructs one on how to find a specific/unique24 similarity cluster21 that is apparent from empirical experience28 29 30, the cluster's size being inversely proportional to the word's length31
- is not a binary category9 11 and cannot be used for deductive inference27
- requires observing only14 a few3 real-world1 properties that can be easily5 verified2 and are less abstract6 than the word being defined (in particular, the definition cannot be circular16)
- is not just a list of random properties10 21
- contains no negated properties10 33
- specifies exhaustively all of the correct connotations of the word25 26
- makes the properties of a random object satisfying the definition be nearly independent34
- has examples6 which satisfy the definition, including the original example(s) that motivated the definition being given15 and typical/conventional examples7
- tells you which examples are more typical or less typical9
- captures enough characteristics of the examples to identify non-members8
And there you go. 17 rules, follow them all and you can't use words wrongly.
I'm having a hard time interpreting the superscripts.
Indexes to the original article.