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...
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 ...
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 ...
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...
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 ...
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...
//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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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.