But you’re arguing against Eliezer, as “God” and “miracle” were (and still are) commonly-used words, and so Eliezer is saying those are good, short words for them.
One observes that the length of an English sentence is not a good way to measure “complexity”. [...] An enormous bolt of electricity comes out of the sky and hits something, and the Norse tribesfolk say, “Maybe a really powerful agent was angry and threw a lightning bolt.” The human brain is the most complex artifact in the known universe. [...] The complexity of anger, and indeed the complexity of intelligence, was glossed over by the humans who hypothesized Thor the thunder-agent.
To a human, Maxwell’s Equations take much longer to explain than Thor.
But you’re arguing against Eliezer, as “God” and “miracle” were (and still are) commonly-used words, and so Eliezer is saying those are good, short words for them.
I don’t think so—I think Eliezer’s just being sloppy here. “God did a miracle” is supposed to be an example of something that sounds simple in plain English but is actually complex: