All of Benjamin Kost's Comments + Replies

I just recently realized this place is even here, but simplifying concepts and applying better pedagogical techniques so that people of average intelligence can learn them is one of my main areas of focus. I believe we could do a lot better job both teaching and getting normal people interested in learning which are two sides of the same coin.

I think it’s not only nice, but a necessary step for reducing information asymmetry which is one of the greatest barriers to effective democratic governance. Designing jargon terms to benefit more challenged learners would carry vastly more benefit than designing them to please adept learners. It wouldn’t harm the adept learners in any significant way (especially since it’s optional), but it would significantly help the more challenged learners. Many of my ideas are designed to address the problem of information asymmetry by improving learning and increasing transparency.

“Some jargon can’t just be replaced with non-jargon and retain its meaning.”

I don’t understand this statement. It’s possible to have two different words with the same meaning but different names. If I rename a word, it doesn’t change the meaning, it just changes the name. My purpose here isn’t to change the meaning of words but to rename them so that they are easier to learn and remember.

As far as jargon words go, “linearity” isn’t too bad because it is short and “line” is the root word anyway, so to your point, that one shouldn’t be renamed. Perhaps I jum... (read more)

2Double
Yes it’s possible we were referring to figuring things by “jargon.” It would be nice to replace cumbersome technical terms with words that have the same meaning (and require a similar level of familiarity with the field to actually understand) but have a clue to their meaning in their structure.

Claude is fine if you ask him to cite his sources since you won’t be directly relying on Claude. It’s still prudent to check the sources.

Thank you for taking the time to explain that. I never took linear algebra, only college algebra, trig, and calc 1, 2, and 3. In college algebra our professor had us adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing matrices and I don’t remember needing those formulas to determine they were linear, but it was a long time ago, so my memory could be wrong, or the prof just gave us linear ones and didn’t make us determine whether they were linear or not. I suspected there was a good chance that what I was saying was ignorant, but you never know until you put it ... (read more)

I’m trying hard to understand your points here. I am not against mathematical notation as that would be crazy. I am against using it to explain what something is the first time when there is an easier way. Bear with me because I am not a math major, but I am pretty sure “a linear equation is an equation that draws a straight line when you graph it” is a good enough explanation for someone to understand the basic concept.

To me, it seems like “ A(cx) = cA(x) and A(x+y) = A(x) + A(y)” is only the technical definition because they are the only two properties ... (read more)

1Double
A linear operation is not the same as a linear function. Your description describes a linear function, not operation. f(x) = x+1 is a linear function but a nonlinear operation (you can see it doesn’t satisfy the criteria.) Linear operations are great because they can be represented as matrix multiplication and matrix multiplication is associative (and fast on computers). “some jargon words that describe very abstract and arcane concepts that don’t map well to normal words which is what I initially thought your point was.” Yep, that’s what I was getting at. Some jargon can’t just be replaced with non-jargon and retain its meaning. Sometimes people need to actually understand things. I like the idea of replacing pointless jargon (eg species names or medical terminology) but lots of jargon has a point. Link to great linear algebra videos: https://youtu.be/fNk_zzaMoSs?si=-Fi9icfamkBW04xE
8sunwillrise
I'm not sure what you are referring to here. They certainly cannot always (or even usually) identify a linear equation. Those 2 things are going to be anywhere between useless and actively counterproductive in the vast majority of situations where you deal with potentially linear operations. Indeed, if A is an n × n matrix of rank anything other than n - 1, the solution space of Ax=0 is not going to be a straight line. It will be a subspace of size n - rank(A), which can be made up of a single point (if A is invertible), a plane, a hyperplane, the entire space, etc. "A function or equation with a constant slope that draws a single straight line on a graph" only works if you have a function on the real line, which is often just... trivial to visualize, especially in comparison to situations where you have matrices (as in linear algebra). Or imagine you have an operation defined on the space of functions on an infinite set X, which takes two functions f and g and adds them pointwise. This is a linear operator that cannot be visualized in any (finite) number of dimensions. So this is not correct, due to the above, and an important part of introductory linear algebra courses at the undergraduate level is to take people away from the Calc 101-style "stare at the graph" thinking and to make them consider the operation itself. An object (the operation) is not the same as its representation (the drawing of its graph), and this is a critical point to understand as soon as possible when dealing with anything math-related (or really, anything rationality-related, as Eliezer has written about in the Sequences many times). Even the graph itself, in mathematical thinking, is crucially not the same as an actual drawing (it's just the set of (x, f(x)), where x is in the domain).

That’s actually good feedback. It’s better to think of the barriers to success ahead of time while I am still in the development phase. I agree that convincing people to do anything is always the hardest part. I did consider that it would be difficult to stop a competitor who is better funded and more well connected from just taking my ideas and creating a less benevolent product with them, and it is a concern that have no answer for.

I don’t think $10 a month to subscribe to a local official in exchange for extra influence is a big deal because $10 isn’t a... (read more)

I don’t particularly agree about the math jargon. On the one hand, it might be annoying for people already familiar with the jargon to change the wording they use, but on the other hand, descriptive wording is easier to remember for people who are unfamiliar with a term and using an index to automatically replace the term on demand doesn’t necessarily affect anyone already familiar with the jargon. Perhaps this needs to be studied more, but this seems obvious to me. If “linearity” is exactly when A(cx) = cA(x) and A(x+y) = A(x) + A(y), there is no reason ... (read more)

1Double
The math symbols are far better at explaining linearity that “homogeneity and additivity” because in order to understand those words you need to either bring in the math symbols or say cumbersome sentences. “Straight line property” is just new jargon. “Linear” is already clearly an adjective, and “linearity” is that adjective turned into a noun. If you can’t understand the symbols, you can’t understand the concept (unless you learned a different set of symbols, but there’s no need for that). Some math notation is bad, and I support changing it. For example, f = O(g) is the notation I see most often for Big-O notation. This is awful because it uses ‘=‘ for something other than equality! Better would be f \in O(g) with O(g) being the set of functions that grow slower or as fast as g.

I’m not sure if certifying a candidate as a leader and optionally holding them to an oath by holding collateral would count as an endorsement, but you never know with legal issues. It is definitely something to look into, so thanks for that information. It would be better for LOCALS to qualify as a tax exempt organization and charity that accepts donations. However, I am not assuming this is legally possible. I would need to find legal expertise to figure out whether it is or isn’t.

Regarding experimental politics being unpopular, I agree that it would be u... (read more)

1Double
I just skimmed this, but it seems like a bunch of studies have found that moving causes harm to children. https://achieveconcierge.com/how-does-frequently-moving-affect-children/ I’m expecting Co-co and LOCALS to fail (nothing against you. These kinds of clever ideas usually fail), and have identified the following possible reasons: * You don’t follow through on your idea. * People get mad at you for trying to meddle with the ‘democratic’ system we have and don’t hear you out as you try to explain “no, this is better democracy.” —Especially the monetization system you described would get justified backlash for its pay-for-representation system. * You never reach the critical mass needed to make the system useful. * Some political group had previously tried something similar and therefore it got banned by the big parties. * You can’t stop Co-co and LOCALS from being partisan. * A competitor makes your thing but entrenched and worse

//There are different kinds of political parties. LOCALS sounds like a single-issue fusion party as described here: https://open.lib.umn.edu/americangovernment/chapter/10-6-minor-parties/


 

Fusion parties choose one of the main two candidates as their candidate. This gets around the spoiler effect. Eg the Populist Party would list whichever of the big candidates supported Free Silver.


 

A problem with that is that fusion parties are illegal in 48 states(?!) because the major parties don’t want to face a coalition against them.


 

LOCALS would try t... (read more)

Reply1111
1Double
More bad news:  "a section 501(c)(3) organization may not publish or distribute printed statements or make oral statements on behalf of, or in opposition to, a candidate for public office" You'd probably want to be a 501(c)(4) or a Political Action Committees (PAC).  How would LOCALS find a politician to be in violation of their oath?  That would be a powerful position to have. "Decentralization" is a property of a system, not a description of how a system would work. Futarchy I'd love to hear your criticisms of futarchy. That could make a good post. Mobility Political mobility is good, but there are limitations. People are sticky. Are you going to make your kid move schools and separate them from their friends because you don't like the city's private airplane policy? Probably not.  Experimental Politics I want more experimental politics so that we can find out which policies actually work! Unfortunately, that's an unpopular opinion. People don't like being in experiments, even when the alternative is they suffer in ignorance. End I feel that you are exhausting my ability to help you refine your ideas. Edit these comments into a post (with proper headings and formatting and a clear line of argument) and see what kinds of responses you get! I'd be especially interested in what lawyers and campaigners think of your ideas.

I’m glad you like the idea. That was a good catch that I didn’t capture of the true meaning of linear very well. I was a little rushed before. That said, your definition isn’t correct either. Though it is true that linear functions have that property, that is merely the additivity property of a linear function which is just the distributive property of multiplication used on a polynomial. I also didn’t see where the linked text you provided even defines linearity or contains the additivity rule you listed. That was a linear algebra textbook chapter though,... (read more)

1Double
The "Definition of a Linear Operator" is at the top of page 2 of the linked text. My definition was missing that in order to be linear, A(cx) = cA(x). I mistakenly thought that this property was provable from the property I gave. Apparently it isn't because of "Hamel bases and the axiom of choice" (ChatGPT tried explaining.) "straight-line property process" is not a helpful description of linearity for beginners or for professionals. "Linearity" is exactly when A(cx) = cA(x) and A(x+y) = A(x) + A(y). Describing that in words would be cumbersome. Defining it every time you see it is also cumbersome. When people come across "legitimate jargon", what they do (and need to do) is to learn a term when they need it to understand what they are reading and look up the definition if they forget. I fully support experimental schemes to remove "illegitimate jargon" like medical latin, biology latin, and politic speak. Other jargon, like that in math and chemistry are necessary for communication.

LOCALS is absolutely NOT a political party. I am very anti political party because I consider political parties to be anti-democratic. I suppose this is the danger in giving a sloppy synopsis. I was hoping to convey that it wasn’t a political party via a context clue by saying LOCALS candidates will run in the democrat and republican primaries. In other words, they would run as democrats and republicans because 1. They are not a political party and 2. The system is rigged to permanently codify the democrat and republican parties as the only 2 viable partie... (read more)

2Double
There are different kinds of political parties. LOCALS sounds like a single-issue fusion party as described here: https://open.lib.umn.edu/americangovernment/chapter/10-6-minor-parties/ Fusion parties choose one of the main two candidates as their candidate. This gets around the spoiler effect. Eg the Populist Party would list whichever of the big candidates supported Free Silver. A problem with that is that fusion parties are illegal in 48 states(?!) because the major parties don’t want to face a coalition against them. LOCALS would try to get the democrat and the republican candidate to use Co-Co to choose their policies (offering the candidate support in form of donations or personnel), and if they do then they get an endorsement. I’m still a bit iffy on the difference between an interest group and a political party, so maybe you are in the clear. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fusion_in_the_United_States I love your vision of how a politician should answer the abortion question. Separating the three questions “who do voters think is qualified” “what do voters want” and “what is true” would be great for democracy. Similar to: https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/futarchy.html When it comes to local vs not local, if 1/100 people is an X, and they are spread out, then their voice doesn’t mean much and the other 99/100 people in their district can push through policies that harm them. If the Xes are in the same district, then they get a say about what happens to them. I used teachers as an example of an X, but it is more general than that. (Though I’m thinking about the persecution of Jews in particular.)

I don’t expect the jargon filter to work perfectly to explain any concept, but I do expect it to make concepts easier to understand because learning new vocabulary is a somewhat cognitively demanding process, and especially so for some people. Memory works differently for different people, and different people have different confidence levels in their vocabulary skills, so the jargon heavy sentence you used above, while perfectly fine for communicating with people such as you and I, wouldn’t he good for getting someone less technically inclined to read ab... (read more)

1Double
The translation sentence about matrices does not have the same meaning as mine. Yes, matrices are “grids of numbers”, and yes there’s an algorithm (step by step process) for matrix multiplication, but that isn’t what linearity means. An operation A is linear iff A(x+y) = A(x) + A(y) https://orb.binghamton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?filename=4&article=1002&context=electrical_fac&type=additional#:~:text=Linear operators are functions on,into an entirely different vector. I asked a doctor friend why doctors use Latin. “To sound smarter than we are. And tradition.” So our words for medicine (and probably similar for biology) are in a local optima, but not a global optima. Tradition is a powerful force, and getting hospitals to change will be difficult. Software to help people read about medicine and other needlessly jargon-filled fields is a great idea. (Putting evolutionary taxonomy information in the name of a creature is a cool idea though, so binomial nomenclature has something going for it.) You don’t have to dumb down your ideas on LessWrong, but remember that communication is a difficult task that relies on effort from both parties (especially the author). You’ve been good so far. It’s just my job as your debate partner to ask many questions.

I forgot to mention, my app would actually present a solution for the word “rationalist” being used to describe the community. One of the features that I plan to implement for it is what I call the jargon index filter which will Automatically replace jargon words and ambiguous words with more descriptive words that anybody can understand. I’ve found LLMs to be very useful for creating the jargon index, but it is a slow process that will take a lot of labor hours using an LLM such as Claude to make as many recommendations for easy to understand replacement... (read more)

1Double
A software that easily lets you see “what does this word mean in context” would be great! I often find that when I force click a word to see it’s definition, the first result is often some irrelevant movie or song, and when there are multiple definitions it can take a second to figure out which one is right. Combine this with software that highlights words that are being used in an odd way (like “Rationalist”) and communication over text can be made much smoother. I don’t think this would be as great against “jargon” unless you mean intentional jargon that is deployed to confuse the reader (eg “subprime mortgages” which is “risky likely to fail house loans”). I’m under the impression that jargon is important for communication among people who have understanding of the topic. “Matrix multiplication is a linear operation” is jargon-heavy and explaining what it means to a fourth grader would take probably more than 30 minutes. Agree that more educated voters would be great. I wish that voters understood Pigouvian taxes. Explaining them takes 10 min according to YouTube. I’d love a solution to teach voters about it.

Thanks. I did give Claude a thumbs up, actually. I’ll give you the gist of my plan. The hardest part to planning something as big as changing society in a large nation like the United States is getting enough people to act on a plan. To do that, the plan involves creating a new social media app that emphasizes local communities called Community-Cohesion or Co-Co for short which will be very comprehensive by design and will try to overtake a slew of other apps that have some obvious problems while also filling some new niches that nobody has even thought of... (read more)

1Double
What would draw people to Co-Co and what would keep them there? How are the preferences of LOCALS users aggregated? LOCALS sounds a lot like a political party. Political parties have been disastrous. I’d love for one of the big two to be replaced. Is LOCALS a temporary measure to get voting reform (eg ranked choice) or a long-term thing? I want more community cohesion when it comes to having more cookouts. More community cohesion in politics makes less sense. A teacher in Texas has more in common with a teacher in NY than the cattle rancher down the road. Unfortunately, the US political system is by design required to be location based. Is LOCALS a political party with “increase local community connection” as its party platform? If the party has some actionable plans, then its ideas can get picked up by the big parties if LOCALS shows that its ideas are popular. This might not be a bad idea and could solve the lack-of-community problem without overthrowing the big parties.
4Double
Voting: left for “this is bad”, right for “this is good.” X for “I disagree” check for “I agree”. This way you can communicate more in your vote. Eg: “He’s right but he’s breaking community norms. Left + check. “He’s wrong but I like the way he thinks. Right + X.” https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HALKHS4pMbfghxsjD/lesswrong-has-agree-disagree-voting-on-all-new-comment

I am not sure what your point was with this, but I think the concept presented is more easily explained by the fact that the more complex the model our brains try to map to, the higher the expected error rate rather than this being a unique phenomenon from mapping 2D vs 3D objects.

I think debating is the best way to learn. I’ve always been somewhat cynical and skeptical and a critical thinker my whole life, so I question most things. Debating works better for me as a learning tool because I can’t be simply fed information like is done in public schools. I have to try to poke holes in it and then be convinced that it still holds water.

As for what I asked Claude, he actually recommended LW to me about 3 different times on 3 different occasions. I collaborate with him to refine my ideas/plans and he recommended finding human collaborat... (read more)

2Double
Welcome! I hope you have Claude a thumbs up for the good response. Everyone agrees with you that yeah, the “Rationalist” name is bad for many reasons including that it gives philosophers the wrong idea. If you could work your social science magic to change the name of an entire community, we’d be interested in hearing your plan! I’d be interested in reading your plan to redesign the social system of the United States! I’ve subscribed to be notified to your posts, so I’ll hopefully see it.

Hello all, and thank you to everyone who helps provide this space. I am glad to have discovered LW. My name is Benjamin. I am a philosopher and self guided learner. I just discovered LW a short while ago and I am reading through the sequences. After many years of attempting to have productive conversations to solve problems and arrive at the truth via social media groups (which is akin to bludgeoning one’s head against the wall repeatedly), I gave up. I was recently recommended to join LW by Claude AI, and it seems like a great recommendation so far.

One o... (read more)

1Double
I'm curious what you asked Claude that got you a recommendation to LessWrong. No need to share if it is personal. I love your attitude to debate. "the loser of a debate is the real winner because they learned something." I need to lose some debates.
7habryka
Welcome! Glad to have you around and it's kind of hilarious to see that you've been recommended to show up here by Claude. I share a lot of your interests and am interested in seeing your writing on it!

I noticed that something is conspicuously missing from this article. Namely, that truth can have disutility as well as utility. There are instances where it is better to not know than to know. For instance, if nazis come to your house looking for Anne Frank, it’s better that they don’t know she is in your attic. It can also be better that someone doesn’t know you don’t like their gift.

Then there are times where the truth can be a hindrance. For example, when I look at the desktop on my computer screen and drag a file to the trash, I am not throwing anythin... (read more)

You are confusing two definitions for the same word. The judge is biased by one definition of “bias”, but not by the other definition as used in cognitive or statistical bias.