Hrm. I realize that the post would be comprehensible to a much wider audience with a glossary, but there’s one level of effort needed for me to write posts like this one, and another level needed for posts where I try to be comprehensible to someone who lacks all the jargon of MIRI-style decision theory. Basically, if I write with a broad audience in mind, then I’m modeling all the inferential gaps and explaining a lot more details. I would never get to points like the one I’m trying to make in this post. (I’ve tried.) Posts like this are primarily for the few people who have kept up with the CDT=EDT sequence so far, to get my updated thinking in writing in case anyone wants to go through the effort of trying to figure out what in the world I mean. To people who need a glossary, I recommend searching lesswrong and the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.
I encounter the same problem when I’m writing about voting theory. But there is a set of people who have followed past discussion closely enough to follow something technical like this with a glossary, but not without one. My solution has been to make sure every acronym I use has an entry on electowiki, and then include a note saying so with a link to electowiki. I think you could helpfully do the same using less wrong wiki.
Hrm. I realize that the post would be comprehensible to a much wider audience with a glossary, but there’s one level of effort needed for me to write posts like this one, and another level needed for posts where I try to be comprehensible to someone who lacks all the jargon of MIRI-style decision theory. Basically, if I write with a broad audience in mind, then I’m modeling all the inferential gaps and explaining a lot more details. I would never get to points like the one I’m trying to make in this post. (I’ve tried.) Posts like this are primarily for the few people who have kept up with the CDT=EDT sequence so far, to get my updated thinking in writing in case anyone wants to go through the effort of trying to figure out what in the world I mean. To people who need a glossary, I recommend searching lesswrong and the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.
I encounter the same problem when I’m writing about voting theory. But there is a set of people who have followed past discussion closely enough to follow something technical like this with a glossary, but not without one. My solution has been to make sure every acronym I use has an entry on electowiki, and then include a note saying so with a link to electowiki. I think you could helpfully do the same using less wrong wiki.