Chemistry would not be improved by providing completely different names to chlorate and perchlorate (e.g. chlorate and sneblobs).
Okay, thats actually a good example. This caused me to re-think my position. After thinking, I’m still not sure that the analogy is actually valid though.
In chemistry, we have a systemic naming scheme. Systematic name schemes are good, because they let us guess word meanings without having to learn them. In a difficult field which most people learn only as adults if at all, this is a very good thing. I’m no chemist, but if I had to guess the words chlorate and perchlorate to cause confusion sometimes, but that this price is overall worth paying for a systemic naming scheme.
For gemstones, we do not currently have a systematic naming scheme. I’m not entirely sure that bringing one in would be good, there aren’t all that many common gemstones that we’re likely to forget them and frankly if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, but I’m not sure it would be bad either.
What would not be good would be to simply rename rubies to diyermands without changing anything else. This would not only result in misunderstandings, but generate the false impression that rubies and diamonds have something special in common as distinct from Sapphires and Emeralds (I apologise for my ignorance if this is in fact the case).
But at least in the case of gemstones we do not already have a serious problem, I do not know of any major epistemic failures floating around to do with the diamond-ruby distinction.
In the case of Pascal’s mugging, we have a complete epistemic disaster, a very specific very useful term have been turned into a useless bloated red-giant word, laden with piles of negative connotations and no actual meaning beyond ‘offer of lots of utility that I need an excuse to ignore’.
I know of almost nobody who has serious problems noticing the similarities between these situations, but tons of people seem not to realise there are any differences. The priority with terminology must be to separate the meanings and make it absolutely clear that these are not the same thing and need not be treated in the same way. Giving them similar names is nearly the worst thing that could be done, second only to leaving the situation as it is.
If you were to propose a systematic terminology for decision-theoretric dilemmas, that would be a different matter. I think I would disagree with you, the field is young and we don’t have a good enough picture of the space of possible problems, a systemic scheme risks reducing our ability to think beyond it.
But that is not what is being suggested, what is being suggested is creating an ad-hoc confusion generator by making deliberately similar terms for different situations.
This might all be rationalisation, but thats my best guess for why the situations feel different to me.
I agree with your analysis regarding the difference between systematic naming systems and merely similar naming. That said, the justification for more clearly separating Pascal’s mugging and this other unnamed situation does strike me as a political decision or rationalization. If the real world impact of people’s misunderstanding were beneficial for the AI friendly cause, I doubt if anyone here would be making much ado about it. I would be in favor of renaming moissanite to diamand if this would help avert our ongoing malinvestment in clear glittery rocks to the tune of billions of dollars and numerous lives, so political reasons can perhaps be justified in some situations.
I would agree that it is to some extent political. I don’t think its very dark artsy though, because it seems to be a case of getting rid of an anti-FAI misunderstanding rather than creating a pro-FAI misunderstanding.
Okay, thats actually a good example. This caused me to re-think my position. After thinking, I’m still not sure that the analogy is actually valid though.
In chemistry, we have a systemic naming scheme. Systematic name schemes are good, because they let us guess word meanings without having to learn them. In a difficult field which most people learn only as adults if at all, this is a very good thing. I’m no chemist, but if I had to guess the words chlorate and perchlorate to cause confusion sometimes, but that this price is overall worth paying for a systemic naming scheme.
For gemstones, we do not currently have a systematic naming scheme. I’m not entirely sure that bringing one in would be good, there aren’t all that many common gemstones that we’re likely to forget them and frankly if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, but I’m not sure it would be bad either.
What would not be good would be to simply rename rubies to diyermands without changing anything else. This would not only result in misunderstandings, but generate the false impression that rubies and diamonds have something special in common as distinct from Sapphires and Emeralds (I apologise for my ignorance if this is in fact the case).
But at least in the case of gemstones we do not already have a serious problem, I do not know of any major epistemic failures floating around to do with the diamond-ruby distinction.
In the case of Pascal’s mugging, we have a complete epistemic disaster, a very specific very useful term have been turned into a useless bloated red-giant word, laden with piles of negative connotations and no actual meaning beyond ‘offer of lots of utility that I need an excuse to ignore’.
I know of almost nobody who has serious problems noticing the similarities between these situations, but tons of people seem not to realise there are any differences. The priority with terminology must be to separate the meanings and make it absolutely clear that these are not the same thing and need not be treated in the same way. Giving them similar names is nearly the worst thing that could be done, second only to leaving the situation as it is.
If you were to propose a systematic terminology for decision-theoretric dilemmas, that would be a different matter. I think I would disagree with you, the field is young and we don’t have a good enough picture of the space of possible problems, a systemic scheme risks reducing our ability to think beyond it.
But that is not what is being suggested, what is being suggested is creating an ad-hoc confusion generator by making deliberately similar terms for different situations.
This might all be rationalisation, but thats my best guess for why the situations feel different to me.
I agree with your analysis regarding the difference between systematic naming systems and merely similar naming. That said, the justification for more clearly separating Pascal’s mugging and this other unnamed situation does strike me as a political decision or rationalization. If the real world impact of people’s misunderstanding were beneficial for the AI friendly cause, I doubt if anyone here would be making much ado about it. I would be in favor of renaming moissanite to diamand if this would help avert our ongoing malinvestment in clear glittery rocks to the tune of billions of dollars and numerous lives, so political reasons can perhaps be justified in some situations.
I would agree that it is to some extent political. I don’t think its very dark artsy though, because it seems to be a case of getting rid of an anti-FAI misunderstanding rather than creating a pro-FAI misunderstanding.