Having defined that I was restricting the comments to Transhumanism as expressed on this site I saw no reason to continue restating the issue. Also, many, but not all, of the points brought up are not restricted to transhumanism as found on this site, as has been established with in this discussion, but to transhumanism in general.
The problem is that using one term to mean something closely related is bound to cause confusion even if you explicitly redefine it at the outset. I would really advise against doing that. And you weren’t even entirely explicit about it; you wrote “Transhumanism, at least as expressed on this site, is as far as I can tell a religion” and then used “transhumanism” thereafter. It would have been clearer had you written something like “Transhumanism, at least as expressed on this site (which hereafter I will just refer to as transhumanism)”, but even then I would advise against it for the reason above. (Especially because people often join these discussions in the middle.)
Added the parenthesis. It is too late in the discussion to go through and relabel everything in my opinion. Doing so would also require more of an explanation of what was being talked about in my opinion.
OK, thanks, that’s at least a little helpful. I’ll disappear from this discussion now.
EDIT: To clarify, this is because really I think this whole discussion is pointless and as TheOtherDave and Vladimir Nesov have pointed out, for reasons that should be clear if you’ve read Eliezer’s 37 ways that words can be wrong. :)
I have read 37 ways that words can be wrong. Your argument is that I violated 20, 20 I feel is a valid point so I attempted to fix it. Not all of the points on that list are valid in my opinion. For instance it is necessary to agree on a definition of what is a religion for my argument to make sense and I have attempted to present that argument in detail in my response to TheOtherDave. I have also attempted to show how this discussion is not pointless, but if you disagree with me then we will have to agree to disagree, which I can do because I don’t accept Eliezer as an authority figure.
Yes; #11 was what I considered to be the problem here. I wasn’t thinking about “defying common usage without a reason” as something where the problem was nonobvious; though he happens to have written about it, referring to the sequences for that would be a cannon-to-kill-a-mosquito sort of thing and didn’t even occur to me.
Which doesn’t seem to be a term you’ve defined at all.
Which is why I haven’t brought it up before, I would say go look it up but then I would be violating a few more of the items on that list. It is also much harder to point to an example and say this is a pseudoreligion, but not a religion and not just some other form of association (at least it is harder for me).
Yes, I’ve seen the term before. The reason I’m asking you to define it if you are going to use it is because like the term “religion” it has different meanings in different contexts when different people are using it (although as far as I can tell most people use it to mean “recent religion that I don’t like” in a way similar to how some people use the term “cult”.) So without expanding out precisely what you mean it isn’t a helpful term.
As far as I can tell a pseudoreligion is a religion that hasn’t coalesced as of yet into a distinct set of shared beliefs. That is how I would use the term.
However, this contradicts many of the ways that it is used generally, which seem to match your view of how people use the term. I am therefore not sure that it is helpful term given the common usage and connotations to that usage. Cult is similarly a difficult word, it is useful in a technical sense to define the worship of something but commonly has a very different meaning.
Would you rather I use “Less Wrong”ism?
If that’s what you mean, yes.
Having defined that I was restricting the comments to Transhumanism as expressed on this site I saw no reason to continue restating the issue. Also, many, but not all, of the points brought up are not restricted to transhumanism as found on this site, as has been established with in this discussion, but to transhumanism in general.
The problem is that using one term to mean something closely related is bound to cause confusion even if you explicitly redefine it at the outset. I would really advise against doing that. And you weren’t even entirely explicit about it; you wrote “Transhumanism, at least as expressed on this site, is as far as I can tell a religion” and then used “transhumanism” thereafter. It would have been clearer had you written something like “Transhumanism, at least as expressed on this site (which hereafter I will just refer to as transhumanism)”, but even then I would advise against it for the reason above. (Especially because people often join these discussions in the middle.)
Added the parenthesis. It is too late in the discussion to go through and relabel everything in my opinion. Doing so would also require more of an explanation of what was being talked about in my opinion.
OK, thanks, that’s at least a little helpful. I’ll disappear from this discussion now.
EDIT: To clarify, this is because really I think this whole discussion is pointless and as TheOtherDave and Vladimir Nesov have pointed out, for reasons that should be clear if you’ve read Eliezer’s 37 ways that words can be wrong. :)
I have read 37 ways that words can be wrong. Your argument is that I violated 20, 20 I feel is a valid point so I attempted to fix it. Not all of the points on that list are valid in my opinion. For instance it is necessary to agree on a definition of what is a religion for my argument to make sense and I have attempted to present that argument in detail in my response to TheOtherDave. I have also attempted to show how this discussion is not pointless, but if you disagree with me then we will have to agree to disagree, which I can do because I don’t accept Eliezer as an authority figure.
For what it is worth, there may be issues with #9 and #11 also.
Yes; #11 was what I considered to be the problem here. I wasn’t thinking about “defying common usage without a reason” as something where the problem was nonobvious; though he happens to have written about it, referring to the sequences for that would be a cannon-to-kill-a-mosquito sort of thing and didn’t even occur to me.
It might be closer to a Pseudoreligion.
I thought I already answered the issue with 11?
Which doesn’t seem to be a term you’ve defined at all.
Some of them. I’m confused with some of your apparent answers to that so I’m not completely sure. It may be a failing on my part.
Which is why I haven’t brought it up before, I would say go look it up but then I would be violating a few more of the items on that list. It is also much harder to point to an example and say this is a pseudoreligion, but not a religion and not just some other form of association (at least it is harder for me).
Yes, I’ve seen the term before. The reason I’m asking you to define it if you are going to use it is because like the term “religion” it has different meanings in different contexts when different people are using it (although as far as I can tell most people use it to mean “recent religion that I don’t like” in a way similar to how some people use the term “cult”.) So without expanding out precisely what you mean it isn’t a helpful term.
As far as I can tell a pseudoreligion is a religion that hasn’t coalesced as of yet into a distinct set of shared beliefs. That is how I would use the term.
However, this contradicts many of the ways that it is used generally, which seem to match your view of how people use the term. I am therefore not sure that it is helpful term given the common usage and connotations to that usage. Cult is similarly a difficult word, it is useful in a technical sense to define the worship of something but commonly has a very different meaning.