I agree with Linda’s reply that “I updated” is somewhat different from “I was convinced” because the former is often used as “I updated somewhat but not completely” with an implicit Bayesian context. “I updated” can be replaced with a whole phrase or sentence, of course, but that’s true for all jargon.
“Sequence” — people have been talking about “essay series”, “book series”, “blog post series” etc. since time immemorial, and then someone (probably Eliezer?) switched from “series” to “sequence” for some reason (joke-y reference to math jargon?), and I think it stuck for in-group signaling reasons
“Upskilling”—I don’t see what it adds over the more-common “learning” or “getting good at” etc.
“Distillation”—it’s not even the right mental image, and I don’t think adds anything over the widespread terms like “pedagogy”, “explainers”, “intro to”, etc.
I’m sure there are others, but alas, I’ve been around long enough that they don’t jump out at me anymore.
TBF I see “sequence” as more of a brand thing. “The sequences” are a specific work of literature at this point. But I suppose it is not necessary to call more series of posts here that way too.
Yeah I was referring to e.g. my own … things that I call “series” and everyone else calls “sequences”.
To be clear, “brand thing” is fine! It’s one of those emotive conjugation things: “I have playful branding and in-jokes, you have pointless jargon for in-group signaling”.
Lesswrong people using “sequence” is not really any different from twitter people using “tweet” and “thread”, or facebook people using “vaguebooking”, etc. You’re trading off a learning curve for newcomers for … playful fun and community! And playful fun and community are worth more than zero. So yeah, I personally opt out of “sequence” and many other unnecessary lesswrong-isms / SF-Bay-area-isms, but I don’t particularly hold it against other people for choosing differently.
I agree that those a better examples, and probably just synonyms.
With the nitpick that it’s not obvious to me how to say “distilling” in one word, in some other way. Although I agree with you that dthe word “distillation” is a bad fit for how we use it.
I’ve updated to think that a diffrent common way jargon happens is that someone temporarley fogett the standard term and grab some other word that is natrual for them and their audience, e.g. sequence instead of series. And sometimes this never gets “corrected”, and instead end up being the new normal in that sub-culture.
I agree with Linda’s reply that “I updated” is somewhat different from “I was convinced” because the former is often used as “I updated somewhat but not completely” with an implicit Bayesian context. “I updated” can be replaced with a whole phrase or sentence, of course, but that’s true for all jargon.
So what are better examples? I was trying to think of some for a joke on X a few years ago, and came up with:
“Sequence” — people have been talking about “essay series”, “book series”, “blog post series” etc. since time immemorial, and then someone (probably Eliezer?) switched from “series” to “sequence” for some reason (joke-y reference to math jargon?), and I think it stuck for in-group signaling reasons
“Upskilling”—I don’t see what it adds over the more-common “learning” or “getting good at” etc.
“Distillation”—it’s not even the right mental image, and I don’t think adds anything over the widespread terms like “pedagogy”, “explainers”, “intro to”, etc.
I’m sure there are others, but alas, I’ve been around long enough that they don’t jump out at me anymore.
TBF I see “sequence” as more of a brand thing. “The sequences” are a specific work of literature at this point. But I suppose it is not necessary to call more series of posts here that way too.
Yeah I was referring to e.g. my own … things that I call “series” and everyone else calls “sequences”.
To be clear, “brand thing” is fine! It’s one of those emotive conjugation things: “I have playful branding and in-jokes, you have pointless jargon for in-group signaling”.
Lesswrong people using “sequence” is not really any different from twitter people using “tweet” and “thread”, or facebook people using “vaguebooking”, etc. You’re trading off a learning curve for newcomers for … playful fun and community! And playful fun and community are worth more than zero. So yeah, I personally opt out of “sequence” and many other unnecessary lesswrong-isms / SF-Bay-area-isms, but I don’t particularly hold it against other people for choosing differently.
I agree that those a better examples, and probably just synonyms.
With the nitpick that it’s not obvious to me how to say “distilling” in one word, in some other way. Although I agree with you that dthe word “distillation” is a bad fit for how we use it.
I’ve updated to think that a diffrent common way jargon happens is that someone temporarley fogett the standard term and grab some other word that is natrual for them and their audience, e.g. sequence instead of series. And sometimes this never gets “corrected”, and instead end up being the new normal in that sub-culture.