I think that the correct way of dealing with at least some of these problems is to create names that are very clearly temporary names, and are marked to be replaced with something better (or to be discarded when they turn out to be wrong).
Making complicated arguments without defining new variables and giving them names is extremely hard. But while you are not sure that the distinctions you’ve drawn are the correct ones, you can label your variables/concepts as temporary. Eliezer’s suggested solution to this was to give temporary or tentative explanation a name that clearly hints at them still being mysterious (e.g. prepending “magical”).
I am not a huge fan of the analytic philosopher’s solution to this, which is giving things one letter variable names, such as “Proposition D”, which I think is too much on the site of non-descriptive.
On the site of bad, put maybe interesting solutions: If we are willing to throw writing convention completely out of the window, we could totally try to explicitly define concepts in monospace font and name them vaguely after what we think the concept should represent, and generally following programming variable declaration conventions, which I think gets a lot of this right. This would probably go horribly wrong, but maybe it wouldn’t, so I would definitely like to see someone try.
Pretty much agreed. I might go beyond “provisional” to “disposable”. I really do take maintaining fluidity and not fooling yourself to be more important/possible than creating common vocabulary or high-level unitary concepts or introspective handles [though I don’t introspect verbally, so maybe I would say that]; I really do think the way the community treats words is a good lever for that.
(Of course, this is all very abstract, isn’t a full elaboration of what I believe, and certainly has no force of argument. At best, I’m pointing towards a few considerations I could readily abstract out of the sum of my observations, in the hopes that people can recontextualize some of their reading with concerns along these lines.)
I’d also like to see someone try your last suggestion. (If nothing else, I might use it in a fiction project.)
I think that the correct way of dealing with at least some of these problems is to create names that are very clearly temporary names, and are marked to be replaced with something better (or to be discarded when they turn out to be wrong).
Making complicated arguments without defining new variables and giving them names is extremely hard. But while you are not sure that the distinctions you’ve drawn are the correct ones, you can label your variables/concepts as temporary. Eliezer’s suggested solution to this was to give temporary or tentative explanation a name that clearly hints at them still being mysterious (e.g. prepending “magical”).
I am not a huge fan of the analytic philosopher’s solution to this, which is giving things one letter variable names, such as “Proposition D”, which I think is too much on the site of non-descriptive.
On the site of bad, put maybe interesting solutions: If we are willing to throw writing convention completely out of the window, we could totally try to explicitly define concepts in monospace font and name them vaguely after what we think the concept should represent, and generally following programming variable declaration conventions, which I think gets a lot of this right. This would probably go horribly wrong, but maybe it wouldn’t, so I would definitely like to see someone try.
Pretty much agreed. I might go beyond “provisional” to “disposable”. I really do take maintaining fluidity and not fooling yourself to be more important/possible than creating common vocabulary or high-level unitary concepts or introspective handles [though I don’t introspect verbally, so maybe I would say that]; I really do think the way the community treats words is a good lever for that.
(Of course, this is all very abstract, isn’t a full elaboration of what I believe, and certainly has no force of argument. At best, I’m pointing towards a few considerations I could readily abstract out of the sum of my observations, in the hopes that people can recontextualize some of their reading with concerns along these lines.)
I’d also like to see someone try your last suggestion. (If nothing else, I might use it in a fiction project.)