When I google “koan”, the first result is Wikipedia which says a koan is “a story, dialogue, question, or statement, which is used in Zen practice to provoke the “great-doubt”, and test the students progress in Zen practice”. Very Zen, that supports my side. The second result is Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, which says a koan is “a paradox to be meditated upon that is used to train Zen Buddhist monks to abandon ultimate dependence on reason”. My side. The third result is for a page titled “101 Zen Koans”, which again supports my belief.
Eliezer has a history of associating mysticism with rationality, as well.
My personal concern is that using words wrong is annoying because I don’t like people mucking up my conceptual spaces. I can’t disassociate koans from mysticism and riddles, which makes it awkward and aesthetically unpleasing for me to approach problems of rationality from a “koan”.
That said, it’s probably too late to change the format of the problems in this current sequence. But I’d like it to never happen again after this gets done.
I suspect it will continue to happen. Invoking the cultural trappings of a certain kind of mysticism while discussing traditionally “rational” topics is, as you note, a popular practice… and not only of Eliezer’s.
I recommend treating the word “koan” as used here as a fancy way of saying “exercise”.
When I google “koan”, the first result is Wikipedia which says a koan is “a story, dialogue, question, or statement, which is used in Zen practice to provoke the “great-doubt”, and test the students progress in Zen practice”. Very Zen, that supports my side. The second result is Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, which says a koan is “a paradox to be meditated upon that is used to train Zen Buddhist monks to abandon ultimate dependence on reason”. My side. The third result is for a page titled “101 Zen Koans”, which again supports my belief.
Eliezer has a history of associating mysticism with rationality, as well.
My personal concern is that using words wrong is annoying because I don’t like people mucking up my conceptual spaces. I can’t disassociate koans from mysticism and riddles, which makes it awkward and aesthetically unpleasing for me to approach problems of rationality from a “koan”.
That said, it’s probably too late to change the format of the problems in this current sequence. But I’d like it to never happen again after this gets done.
I suspect it will continue to happen. Invoking the cultural trappings of a certain kind of mysticism while discussing traditionally “rational” topics is, as you note, a popular practice… and not only of Eliezer’s.
I recommend treating the word “koan” as used here as a fancy way of saying “exercise”.