Yep, I’d definitely agree that it’s harder. That said, this doesn’t mean that it’s not high-ev to improve on. One outcome could be that we should be more careful introducing names, as it is difficult to change them. Another would be to work to attempt to have formal ways of changing them after, even though it is difficult (It would be worthwhile in some cases, I assume).
In a recent thread about changing the name of Solstice to Solstice Advent, Oliver Habryka estimated it would cost at least $100,000 to make that happen. This seems like a reasonable estimate to me, and a good lower bound for how much value you could get from a name change to make it worth it
The idea of lowering this cost is quite appealing, but I’m not sure how to make a significant difference there.
I think it’s also worth thinking about the counterfactual cost of discouraging naming things.
Yep, I’d definitely agree that it’s harder. That said, this doesn’t mean that it’s not high-ev to improve on. One outcome could be that we should be more careful introducing names, as it is difficult to change them. Another would be to work to attempt to have formal ways of changing them after, even though it is difficult (It would be worthwhile in some cases, I assume).
In a recent thread about changing the name of Solstice to Solstice Advent, Oliver Habryka estimated it would cost at least $100,000 to make that happen. This seems like a reasonable estimate to me, and a good lower bound for how much value you could get from a name change to make it worth it
The idea of lowering this cost is quite appealing, but I’m not sure how to make a significant difference there.
I think it’s also worth thinking about the counterfactual cost of discouraging naming things.
As an example, here’s a post with an important concept that hasn’t really spread because it doesn’t have a snappy name: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K4eDzqS2rbcBDsCLZ/unrolling-social-metacognition-three-levels-of-meta-are-not