The idea of concept-handles is itself a concept-handle; it means a catchy phrase that sums up a complex topic.
Eliezer Yudkowsky is really good at this. “belief in belief“, “semantic stopsigns“, “applause lights“, “Pascal’s mugging“, “adaptation-executors vs. fitness-maximizers“, “reversed stupidity vs. intelligence“, “joy in the merely real” – all of these are interesting ideas, but more important they’re interesting ideas with short catchy names that everybody knows, so we can talk about them easily.
I have very consciously tried to emulate that when talking about ideas like trivial inconveniences, meta-contrarianism, toxoplasma, and Moloch.
I would go even further and say that this is one of the most important things a blog like this can do. I’m not too likely to discover some entirely new social phenomenon that nobody’s ever thought about before. But there are a lot of things people have vague nebulous ideas about that they can’t quite put into words. Changing those into crystal-clear ideas they can manipulate and discuss with others is a big deal.
If you figure out something interesting and very briefly cram it into somebody else’s head, don’t waste that! Give it a nice concept-handle so that they’ll remember it and be able to use it to solve other problems!
I’ll add that memorable, idea-crystallizing labels can also be useful for your own thinking, even if you only use them in your own head. Instead of thinking “I’m doing that thing, I should do that other thing instead” or “I’m doing that thing where [20-word description], better switch to [12-word description]” you tell yourself (e.g.) “That feels like doublethink, time to singlethink.”
Coincidentally, Scott Alexander just wrote a post with nonfiction writing advice which includes:
I’ll add that memorable, idea-crystallizing labels can also be useful for your own thinking, even if you only use them in your own head. Instead of thinking “I’m doing that thing, I should do that other thing instead” or “I’m doing that thing where [20-word description], better switch to [12-word description]” you tell yourself (e.g.) “That feels like doublethink, time to singlethink.”