Yeah, I figured that was probably the case. Still seemed worth checking.
You’re almost certainly correct that it’s nonzero/substantially off-putting to your readers, but I would bet at 5:1 odds that it’s still less costly than the otherwise-inevitable-according-to-your-models misunderstandings
I’m not entirely sure what the claim that you’re putting odds on is, but usually, in my situation:
I write different pieces for different audiences
I promote the writing to the audience that I wrote for
I predict, but haven’t checked, that significantly less of the intended audience would read it if I couldn’t simply use the accepted jargon for that audience and instead had to explain it / rule out everything else
I find that the audience I didn’t promote it to mostly doesn’t read it (limiting the number of misunderstandings).
So I think I’m in the position where it makes sense to take cheap actions to avoid misunderstandings, but not expensive ones. I also feel constrained by the two groups having very different (effective) norms, e.g. in ML it’s a lot more important to be concise, and it’s a lot more weird (though maybe not bad?) to propose new short phrases for existing concepts.
One benefit of blog posts is the ability to footnote terms that might be contentious. Saying “reward[1]...” and then 1: for Less Wrong visitors, “reward” in this context means … clarifies for anyone who needs it/might want to respond while letting the intended audience gloss over the moat and read your point with the benefit of jargon.
Yeah, I figured that was probably the case. Still seemed worth checking.
I’m not entirely sure what the claim that you’re putting odds on is, but usually, in my situation:
I write different pieces for different audiences
I promote the writing to the audience that I wrote for
I predict, but haven’t checked, that significantly less of the intended audience would read it if I couldn’t simply use the accepted jargon for that audience and instead had to explain it / rule out everything else
I find that the audience I didn’t promote it to mostly doesn’t read it (limiting the number of misunderstandings).
So I think I’m in the position where it makes sense to take cheap actions to avoid misunderstandings, but not expensive ones. I also feel constrained by the two groups having very different (effective) norms, e.g. in ML it’s a lot more important to be concise, and it’s a lot more weird (though maybe not bad?) to propose new short phrases for existing concepts.
One benefit of blog posts is the ability to footnote terms that might be contentious. Saying “reward[1]...” and then 1: for Less Wrong visitors, “reward” in this context means … clarifies for anyone who needs it/might want to respond while letting the intended audience gloss over the moat and read your point with the benefit of jargon.
True! I might try that strategy more deliberately in the future.