That’s pretty close to my actual position. I would add that it is also acceptable to, essentially, create a new namespace—in other words, to formulate a new set of jargon, and then use it in all discussions of the topic. (This, for example, is more or less what Eliezer did, when writing the Sequences.)
The context in which this all came up—and why I thought it interesting to raise the disagreement to further attention—was one in which I was proposing explicitly namespaced alternative definitions of “akrasia” (within the scope of a rationalist taboo), and you were objecting to it. Perhaps I should have said more than “taboo” to be clear I was namespacing?
Our local jargon, here, already has a definition of “akrasia”. You proposed to replace it, because you wished to introduce a new concept—one which was close to the concept picked out by the existing definition, but different. It is unwise—because both confusing and misleading—to appropriate existing words in such cases. It is far better to select a new term. That appropriately highlights the fact that we acknowledge that there is an existing usage, but are talking about a different thing. Losing sight of this fact, or allowing, by omission, our readers to lose sight of it, is dangerous.
To the extent that you’re suggesting conversational norms which would have more clearly delimited what was going on, I can sympathize. To the extent that you’re proposing conversational norms which would block me from asking the question I was asking, I’m having trouble sympathizing. I feel like you’re doing the latter, since we were already in the context of tabooing akrasia—so I was already admitting I was confused about what concept I was pointing at, and I was trying to articulate what concept I might want to point at, rather than trying to define “akrasia”.
If I find that I’m confused about what role a word is playing in an argument, I want to figure out a way to point at the concept which should have been pointed at in order to be relevant to the discussion.
Perhaps this is a disagreement about the meaning of rationalist taboo? I am having a vague feeling that there’s a reasonable interpretation of rationalist taboo under which it isn’t legitimate to interpret it as declaring a new namespace. But I’m not really seeing it—in my current mental state, it seems like the purpose of rational taboo fits with what I’m saying in the previous two paragraphs, and so has to allow the introduction of new concepts which are significantly different than the word being tabooed.
Perhaps this is a disagreement about the meaning of rationalist taboo? I am having a vague feeling that there’s a reasonable interpretation of rationalist taboo under which it isn’t legitimate to interpret it as declaring a new namespace.
It is difficult for me to imagine a reasonable interpretation of rationalist taboo under which it is legitimate to intepret it as declaring a new namespace, so, indeed, there is quite a disagreement here!
So, you say:
To the extent that you’re proposing conversational norms which would block me from asking the question I was asking, I’m having trouble sympathizing.
And the question in question was:
In that case, what about the following tabooing of Akrasia: “divergence between words and actions which is not due to hostile agency in the sense of #6” (IE, your ″purpose that is self-serving (possibly at our expense, though without harming us being the explicit goal), or actively hostile, or both″)?
That, to me, is nonsensical. A “tabooing” is a move where you replace the name of a concept/phenomenon/thing with a description of that thing. Here you instead proposed to substitute a description of some other thing. That is not rationalist taboo, that is something else—something very different.
… in my current mental state, it seems like the purpose of rational taboo … has to allow the introduction of new concepts which are significantly different than the word being tabooed.
I disagree, as you see; indeed, I’d say this is almost the diametric opposite of the purpose of rationalist taboo.
The point of rationalist taboo (at least, as I see it) is to avoid (1) wasting time arguing “what should we mean by X?” and (2) falling into confusion by failing to notice that you even need to have that argument, by describing explicitly the thing you have in mind (which may or may not resemble what other parties involved mean when they say “X”).
Saying “OK, for present purposes when I say X I mean Y”, where Y is an explicit description of the sort you might use with X tabooed, seems like it’s aiming to prevent 1 and 2 by making meanings explicit … so whether or not you want to call it “rationalist taboo”, it seems like it’s at least something closely related and with similar intended effects.
(You might consider tabooing “taboo” and seeing whether that helps clarify things. Or that might be one level of recursive rabbit hole too many.)
Merely as one datapoint, and without any claim that anyone else should do as I do: I find abramdemski’s usage of “taboo” a bit weird; for me, not using the tabooed word is an essential feature, and even though defining terms clearly and explicitly is closely related and accomplishes, or at least aims to accomplish, the same goals—I wouldn’t myself call it “tabooing”. (I have actually played the game for which the technique is made; perhaps that makes it feel weirder to me than to those who haven’t, to see the term used for a practice that omits the single central feature of the game.) I don’t think it’s necessarily bad to say “In what follows I’ll use X to mean Y” even when Y doesn’t quite match the usual usage of X, but it seems to me that usually it’s better to coin a new term, or festoon the word with indicative annotations. “Schmakrasia”. “Broad-sense akrasia”. “AkrasiaDemski”. “Akrasia-2”. That sort of thing.
In the particular discussion between Abram and Said that we’re now meta-discussing, I think ordinary tabooing would have been effective. Turn Abram’s original comment into, say, “We know that people often say, without malign intent or deliberate dishonesty, that they want to do something they don’t actually do”, and it becomes clearer just what gaps need filling to make this part of a defence of hypocrisy (and what senses of “hypocrisy” it might apply to). How does this compare with saying “We know that people suffer from akrasia, where by akrasia I mean divergence between words and actions not caused by malign intent”? I think it’s better because it’s clearer (less ambiguity about what sort of words, for instance) and I think Actual Tabooing is more effective in eliciting this sort of clarity than Giving Explicit Definitions because of the way it requires you to actually fit your explicit definitions into the argument, rather than making them separately.
That, to me, is nonsensical. A “tabooing” is a move where you replace the name of a concept/phenomenon/thing with a description of that thing. Here you instead proposed to substitute a description of some other thing. That is not rationalist taboo, that is something else—something very different.
I agree, I was suggesting a different concept. I shouldn’t have said that it was namespacing, since that implies I would have been proposing an alternate definition of akrasia, whereas it would have made more sense to abandon akrasia (IE you’re right).
What I was really trying to do there shouldn’t by any means be seen as a “local definition” (IE I’m wrong).
(quoting gjm)
Merely as one datapoint, and without any claim that anyone else should do as I do: I find abramdemski’s usage of “taboo” a bit weird; for me, not using the tabooed word is an essential feature, and even though defining terms clearly and explicitly is closely related and accomplishes, or at least aims to accomplish, the same goals—I wouldn’t myself call it “tabooing”.
In this case, it seems clear that actually omitting the word entirely would have been much better, since it would not have resulted in this sub-disagreement. I was using “taboo” as shorthand for find-and-replace style substitution in the claims I had made, but it would have been better to just perform the substitution, so as to avoid any implicit claim that the substitution could have been what I originally meant by “akrasia”.
Glad to see you and Said resolve this disagreement, with gjm’s help (who I think deserves a lot of credit for jumping in with a really clear explanation of what went wrong and how to fix it).
The context in which this all came up—and why I thought it interesting to raise the disagreement to further attention—was one in which I was proposing explicitly namespaced alternative definitions of “akrasia” (within the scope of a rationalist taboo), and you were objecting to it. Perhaps I should have said more than “taboo” to be clear I was namespacing?
Our local jargon, here, already has a definition of “akrasia”. You proposed to replace it, because you wished to introduce a new concept—one which was close to the concept picked out by the existing definition, but different. It is unwise—because both confusing and misleading—to appropriate existing words in such cases. It is far better to select a new term. That appropriately highlights the fact that we acknowledge that there is an existing usage, but are talking about a different thing. Losing sight of this fact, or allowing, by omission, our readers to lose sight of it, is dangerous.
To the extent that you’re suggesting conversational norms which would have more clearly delimited what was going on, I can sympathize. To the extent that you’re proposing conversational norms which would block me from asking the question I was asking, I’m having trouble sympathizing. I feel like you’re doing the latter, since we were already in the context of tabooing akrasia—so I was already admitting I was confused about what concept I was pointing at, and I was trying to articulate what concept I might want to point at, rather than trying to define “akrasia”.
If I find that I’m confused about what role a word is playing in an argument, I want to figure out a way to point at the concept which should have been pointed at in order to be relevant to the discussion.
Perhaps this is a disagreement about the meaning of rationalist taboo? I am having a vague feeling that there’s a reasonable interpretation of rationalist taboo under which it isn’t legitimate to interpret it as declaring a new namespace. But I’m not really seeing it—in my current mental state, it seems like the purpose of rational taboo fits with what I’m saying in the previous two paragraphs, and so has to allow the introduction of new concepts which are significantly different than the word being tabooed.
It is difficult for me to imagine a reasonable interpretation of rationalist taboo under which it is legitimate to intepret it as declaring a new namespace, so, indeed, there is quite a disagreement here!
So, you say:
And the question in question was:
That, to me, is nonsensical. A “tabooing” is a move where you replace the name of a concept/phenomenon/thing with a description of that thing. Here you instead proposed to substitute a description of some other thing. That is not rationalist taboo, that is something else—something very different.
I disagree, as you see; indeed, I’d say this is almost the diametric opposite of the purpose of rationalist taboo.
The point of rationalist taboo (at least, as I see it) is to avoid (1) wasting time arguing “what should we mean by X?” and (2) falling into confusion by failing to notice that you even need to have that argument, by describing explicitly the thing you have in mind (which may or may not resemble what other parties involved mean when they say “X”).
Saying “OK, for present purposes when I say X I mean Y”, where Y is an explicit description of the sort you might use with X tabooed, seems like it’s aiming to prevent 1 and 2 by making meanings explicit … so whether or not you want to call it “rationalist taboo”, it seems like it’s at least something closely related and with similar intended effects.
(You might consider tabooing “taboo” and seeing whether that helps clarify things. Or that might be one level of recursive rabbit hole too many.)
Merely as one datapoint, and without any claim that anyone else should do as I do: I find abramdemski’s usage of “taboo” a bit weird; for me, not using the tabooed word is an essential feature, and even though defining terms clearly and explicitly is closely related and accomplishes, or at least aims to accomplish, the same goals—I wouldn’t myself call it “tabooing”. (I have actually played the game for which the technique is made; perhaps that makes it feel weirder to me than to those who haven’t, to see the term used for a practice that omits the single central feature of the game.) I don’t think it’s necessarily bad to say “In what follows I’ll use X to mean Y” even when Y doesn’t quite match the usual usage of X, but it seems to me that usually it’s better to coin a new term, or festoon the word with indicative annotations. “Schmakrasia”. “Broad-sense akrasia”. “AkrasiaDemski”. “Akrasia-2”. That sort of thing.
In the particular discussion between Abram and Said that we’re now meta-discussing, I think ordinary tabooing would have been effective. Turn Abram’s original comment into, say, “We know that people often say, without malign intent or deliberate dishonesty, that they want to do something they don’t actually do”, and it becomes clearer just what gaps need filling to make this part of a defence of hypocrisy (and what senses of “hypocrisy” it might apply to). How does this compare with saying “We know that people suffer from akrasia, where by akrasia I mean divergence between words and actions not caused by malign intent”? I think it’s better because it’s clearer (less ambiguity about what sort of words, for instance) and I think Actual Tabooing is more effective in eliciting this sort of clarity than Giving Explicit Definitions because of the way it requires you to actually fit your explicit definitions into the argument, rather than making them separately.
I agree with everything you said.
(quoting Said)
I agree, I was suggesting a different concept. I shouldn’t have said that it was namespacing, since that implies I would have been proposing an alternate definition of akrasia, whereas it would have made more sense to abandon akrasia (IE you’re right).
What I was really trying to do there shouldn’t by any means be seen as a “local definition” (IE I’m wrong).
(quoting gjm)
In this case, it seems clear that actually omitting the word entirely would have been much better, since it would not have resulted in this sub-disagreement. I was using “taboo” as shorthand for find-and-replace style substitution in the claims I had made, but it would have been better to just perform the substitution, so as to avoid any implicit claim that the substitution could have been what I originally meant by “akrasia”.
Glad to see you and Said resolve this disagreement, with gjm’s help (who I think deserves a lot of credit for jumping in with a really clear explanation of what went wrong and how to fix it).