On the subject of jargon, there’s one piece of jargon that I’ve long found troubling on LW, and that’s the reference to ‘tech’ (for mental techniques/tools/psycho-technologies), which I’ve seen Duncan use a few times IIRC.
A few issues: 1. It’s exactly the same usage as the word ‘tech’ in the fake scifi ‘religion’ that must not be named (lest you summon its demons to the forum through the Google portal). They do exercises to give them new mental tools, based on reading the lengthy writings of their founder on how to think, and those lessons/materials/techniques are always referred to as ‘tech.’ This doesn’t automatically make our usage of it bad, but it’s probably smart to avoid so closely mirroring their usage imo.
2. Using the word ‘tech’ doesn’t shine much light. I’m aware of the concept of ‘exaptation’ and that things external to the mind can be integrated into the mind much the way that a craftsman stops seeing the hammer as separate from his hand. Still, it doesn’t seem very useful to blur the distinction between mental techniques and reasoning strategies we can learn and internalise by reading blog posts, and literal technology we might use to augment or supplement our thinking abilities.
On the subject of jargon, there’s one piece of jargon that I’ve long found troubling on LW, and that’s the reference to ‘tech’ (for mental techniques/tools/psycho-technologies), which I’ve seen Duncan use a few times IIRC.
A few issues:
1. It’s exactly the same usage as the word ‘tech’ in the fake scifi ‘religion’ that must not be named (lest you summon its demons to the forum through the Google portal). They do exercises to give them new mental tools, based on reading the lengthy writings of their founder on how to think, and those lessons/materials/techniques are always referred to as ‘tech.’ This doesn’t automatically make our usage of it bad, but it’s probably smart to avoid so closely mirroring their usage imo.
2. Using the word ‘tech’ doesn’t shine much light. I’m aware of the concept of ‘exaptation’ and that things external to the mind can be integrated into the mind much the way that a craftsman stops seeing the hammer as separate from his hand. Still, it doesn’t seem very useful to blur the distinction between mental techniques and reasoning strategies we can learn and internalise by reading blog posts, and literal technology we might use to augment or supplement our thinking abilities.
To be clear, I’m blurring lines even further than you describe above; I use “tech” for all three of the following categories:
Actual technological development, such as LLMs or new kinds of steel
Mental technologies like TAPs and Gendlin’s Focusing
Social tech like duels (obsoleted, but superior to their predecessors) and “I statements”
Perhaps separate nomenclature can be used for each meaning?
Such as:
‘atech’
‘mtech
″stech’
etc.