As a non-native English speaker, it was a surprise that “self-conscious” normally means “shy”, “embarassed”, “uncomfortable”, … I blame lesswrong for giving me the wrong idea of this word meaning.
The use of ‘self-conscious’ to refer to having knowledge of yourself as a conscious being isn’t unique to LW, but is borrowed from philosophy. Blame the philosophers I say!
Anyway, they could have chosen to come up with a new term instead of using the not-most widely (but still commonly) used definition of ‘self-conscious’, but that would mean even more LW-specific jargon (which is also heavily criticized). It’s not at all clear to me whether pushing towards greater jargon usage would be an improvement in general.
As a non-native English speaker, it was a surprise that “self-conscious” normally means “shy”, “embarassed”, “uncomfortable”, … I blame lesswrong for giving me the wrong idea of this word meaning.
The more naive interpretation of the phrase is instead represented by “self-aware”, if that’s helpful.
“self-aware” can also be “self-aware” as in, say, “self-aware humor”
The use of ‘self-conscious’ to refer to having knowledge of yourself as a conscious being isn’t unique to LW, but is borrowed from philosophy. Blame the philosophers I say!
Anyway, they could have chosen to come up with a new term instead of using the not-most widely (but still commonly) used definition of ‘self-conscious’, but that would mean even more LW-specific jargon (which is also heavily criticized). It’s not at all clear to me whether pushing towards greater jargon usage would be an improvement in general.
The longer phrase ‘aware of your own awareness’ is sometimes used.