Curious how long you spent attempting to name the thing?
You have (in the past) persuaded me that Jargon is sufficiently important that we should err more (or at least as much) on the side of having more.
But my current thought it something like “I do not know anyone in the rationalsphere who has made much deliberate study of how to name things well, and this probably means we could be much better at naming things than we are.” Not sure how long you tried with the theodicy post, but for the average LW-writer-that-I-assume-probably-doesn’t-think-enough about naming, I think:
It’s worth spending 5 minutes coming up with names for the pure value of “getting the best name in 5 minutes”
It’s even more worthwhile to spend extra time thinking of names so that you can improve at doing it so that it can take less time later.
FYI, this is what I output in about 3 minutes.
Theodicy and the Hierarchy of Charity
(for blogposts, I think “Catchy-name plus short sentence-fragment” is a pretty good compromise. In conversation people can say “you’re not doing theodicy” and when they go look it up, the post title will help remind them wtf that means. I think, at the very least, this’d have been strictly better)
Variations:
Theodicy and the Hierarchy of Good Faith
Operationalizing Good Faith
Hierarchy of Good Faith
Hierarchy of Charity
Avoiding the “Bad Bucket”
Variations:
Bad-Bucketing
Badsplaining
Sorting the “Bad Bucket”
Just-How-They-Are-ism
Theodicy, and Sorting the Bad Bucket (I think this is my favorite)
(For someone who hates the term “Bucket Errors” I apparently like it as the name for this thing”)
Aside: I think “The Fundamental Attribution Error” is one of the worst named things that the LW-o-sphere has tried to popularize, and it could use some kind of better name.
The technical definition of Fundamental Attribution Error is subtly different from the implied definition of “don’t just put people in the Bad Bucket”, but I think it is easier to say/work-with. (“Just-how-they-are-ism” was an attempt to name the FAE in particular, as opposed to name the post)
I spent more than five minutes, and in general have spent a lot of time making deliberate study of how to name things. I’m not claiming that “Theodicy in Humans” was the best expression of that study, or that I brought my full optimizing power to bear in that specific case, but if your sense of the rationalsphere not attending to this is correct, then I would expect that I’m in the 95th percentile or higher for having put real attention and modeling power behind this domain.
I claim that Theodicy and the Hierarchy of Charity is not only not “strictly better” (which is a very strong phrase) but in practice noticeably worse, because it leaves ambiguous whether the concepts in the post should be stashed under “theodicy” or under “hierarchy of charity.” Sort of like if the post from Scott had been “Meditations on Moloch and Multipolar Traps.” You end up with double the burden of namespace tracking, and if half your audience resonates with one name and the other half with the other, you’ve just created a problem where there are two terms floating around for the same thing and newcomers don’t know that it’s a single conversation.
Woah! That sounds very unusual—it might be valuable for you talk about all that explicitly rather than write more like this post (which was presumably generated from your internalization of all that study, but which doesn’t go out of its way to show it).
(Also, for what it’s worth, I thought the title “Theodicy in Humans” was good—good enough for me to generate an approximation of the post before even reading it, although with slightly different context I’d have expected “theodicy” to be a derogatory analogy. And to bikeshed a bit, I might have used “theodicy for humans” [or maybe “of”], as you do in the text; it seems more accurate, and for your purposes it would make sense to use the title verbatim at least once.)
I echo this. People don’t think enough about naming things so unpacking your additional thoughts will be helpful. I too am being deliberate with my naming of things but there’s a good chance you have good advice for how to do it better.
I agree that “in humans” is wrong, but I don’t like “for humans” either. “Theodicy in humans” means theodicy as practised by humans. “Theodicy for humans” means theodicy as it should be practised by humans. “Theodicy of humans” means theodicy applied to humans, and this is the one that matches Conor’s intention. I don’t think this is bikeshedding; the preposition Conor used is, for me at least, actively misleading.
You end up with double the burden of namespace tracking, and if half your audience resonates with one name and the other half with the other, you’ve just created a problem where there are two terms floating around for the same thing and newcomers don’t know that it’s a single conversation.
Yeah. Point conceded.
I would expect that I’m in the 95th percentile or higher for having put real attention and modeling power behind this domain.
Yeah, I did phrase the initial paragraph carefully because I expected you to be fairly attentive to this already.
I’m emphasizing this topic because I think post-names is the single biggest area in your sequence that would benefit from increased attention (and, however hard it is to make further progress, in at least a few cases, lack-of-it-being-better is the main obstacle from some of the posts being something I will proactively link people to all the time)
The world is full of unfair facts and I believe one of them is “even if naming things optimally is very hard, we need to get really good at it anyway. Especially if naming things turns out to be the dominant way we’re providing value.”
I will admit that I haven’t been putting much strength behind naming the posts in this sequence, so your wish that it receives more attention is basically granted for the last nine posts.
Also, hopefully goes without saying (but maybe even if it does, beneficial for *other* people to hear it said?) that the sequence has been generally great and full of valuable nuggets.
(I perceive Conor has having opted into a more direct [i.e. slightly harsher] style of feedback that I would not give to people who did not seem to have opted into that)
Curious how long you spent attempting to name the thing?
You have (in the past) persuaded me that Jargon is sufficiently important that we should err more (or at least as much) on the side of having more.
But my current thought it something like “I do not know anyone in the rationalsphere who has made much deliberate study of how to name things well, and this probably means we could be much better at naming things than we are.” Not sure how long you tried with the theodicy post, but for the average LW-writer-that-I-assume-probably-doesn’t-think-enough about naming, I think:
It’s worth spending 5 minutes coming up with names for the pure value of “getting the best name in 5 minutes”
It’s even more worthwhile to spend extra time thinking of names so that you can improve at doing it so that it can take less time later.
FYI, this is what I output in about 3 minutes.
Theodicy and the Hierarchy of Charity
(for blogposts, I think “Catchy-name plus short sentence-fragment” is a pretty good compromise. In conversation people can say “you’re not doing theodicy” and when they go look it up, the post title will help remind them wtf that means. I think, at the very least, this’d have been strictly better)
Variations:
Theodicy and the Hierarchy of Good Faith
Operationalizing Good Faith
Hierarchy of Good Faith
Hierarchy of Charity
Avoiding the “Bad Bucket”
Variations:
Bad-Bucketing
Badsplaining
Sorting the “Bad Bucket”
Just-How-They-Are-ism
Theodicy, and Sorting the Bad Bucket (I think this is my favorite)
(For someone who hates the term “Bucket Errors” I apparently like it as the name for this thing”)
Aside: I think “The Fundamental Attribution Error” is one of the worst named things that the LW-o-sphere has tried to popularize, and it could use some kind of better name.
The technical definition of Fundamental Attribution Error is subtly different from the implied definition of “don’t just put people in the Bad Bucket”, but I think it is easier to say/work-with. (“Just-how-they-are-ism” was an attempt to name the FAE in particular, as opposed to name the post)
I spent more than five minutes, and in general have spent a lot of time making deliberate study of how to name things. I’m not claiming that “Theodicy in Humans” was the best expression of that study, or that I brought my full optimizing power to bear in that specific case, but if your sense of the rationalsphere not attending to this is correct, then I would expect that I’m in the 95th percentile or higher for having put real attention and modeling power behind this domain.
I claim that Theodicy and the Hierarchy of Charity is not only not “strictly better” (which is a very strong phrase) but in practice noticeably worse, because it leaves ambiguous whether the concepts in the post should be stashed under “theodicy” or under “hierarchy of charity.” Sort of like if the post from Scott had been “Meditations on Moloch and Multipolar Traps.” You end up with double the burden of namespace tracking, and if half your audience resonates with one name and the other half with the other, you’ve just created a problem where there are two terms floating around for the same thing and newcomers don’t know that it’s a single conversation.
For reference: I’ve spent >10 hours of explicit study and modeling on each of the following (and sometimes >100h):
Baby names
Fantasy names (cities and creatures and individuals)
Organizational titles
Rationalist house names
Phonetics
Puns/word inversions/prefix and suffix switches/derived meanings
Names for skills and techniques
Unique semantic schema that unambiguously link phonemes to morphemes
Woah! That sounds very unusual—it might be valuable for you talk about all that explicitly rather than write more like this post (which was presumably generated from your internalization of all that study, but which doesn’t go out of its way to show it).
(Also, for what it’s worth, I thought the title “Theodicy in Humans” was good—good enough for me to generate an approximation of the post before even reading it, although with slightly different context I’d have expected “theodicy” to be a derogatory analogy. And to bikeshed a bit, I might have used “theodicy for humans” [or maybe “of”], as you do in the text; it seems more accurate, and for your purposes it would make sense to use the title verbatim at least once.)
I echo this. People don’t think enough about naming things so unpacking your additional thoughts will be helpful. I too am being deliberate with my naming of things but there’s a good chance you have good advice for how to do it better.
I agree that “in humans” is wrong, but I don’t like “for humans” either. “Theodicy in humans” means theodicy as practised by humans. “Theodicy for humans” means theodicy as it should be practised by humans. “Theodicy of humans” means theodicy applied to humans, and this is the one that matches Conor’s intention. I don’t think this is bikeshedding; the preposition Conor used is, for me at least, actively misleading.
Yeah, my autocorrect guessed what he meant easily enough, but I’m convinced. I think I just needed to see someone else say this.
Yeah. Point conceded.
Yeah, I did phrase the initial paragraph carefully because I expected you to be fairly attentive to this already.
I’m emphasizing this topic because I think post-names is the single biggest area in your sequence that would benefit from increased attention (and, however hard it is to make further progress, in at least a few cases, lack-of-it-being-better is the main obstacle from some of the posts being something I will proactively link people to all the time)
The world is full of unfair facts and I believe one of them is “even if naming things optimally is very hard, we need to get really good at it anyway. Especially if naming things turns out to be the dominant way we’re providing value.”
I will admit that I haven’t been putting much strength behind naming the posts in this sequence, so your wish that it receives more attention is basically granted for the last nine posts.
Yay!
Also, hopefully goes without saying (but maybe even if it does, beneficial for *other* people to hear it said?) that the sequence has been generally great and full of valuable nuggets.
(I perceive Conor has having opted into a more direct [i.e. slightly harsher] style of feedback that I would not give to people who did not seem to have opted into that)