There is a cost to doing nothing as well. Calling them koans potentially has the following effects:
Makes people think that rationality is Zen.
Makes people think Zen is rational.
Irritates people who know/care more about Zen than average.
Signals disrespect of specialized knowledge.
Encourages a norm of misusing/inflating terms beyond their technical use.
The question is whether it is more costly to make the change or not. How costly is the change? Are the costs long-term or short-term? (The costs of not making the change are mostly long-term.)
Also relevant: Apart from avoiding the above costs, are there benefits to changing it to something else? (For example, a better term could make the articles more interesting and intuitive to beginners than “koan” does.)
Knowing the kind of people who read LW, I guess that on reading “koan” more people will think about hacker koans than Zen kōans (also given no macron on the O).
There is a cost to doing nothing as well. Calling them koans potentially has the following effects:
Makes people think that rationality is Zen.
Makes people think Zen is rational.
Irritates people who know/care more about Zen than average.
Signals disrespect of specialized knowledge.
Encourages a norm of misusing/inflating terms beyond their technical use.
The question is whether it is more costly to make the change or not. How costly is the change? Are the costs long-term or short-term? (The costs of not making the change are mostly long-term.)
Also relevant: Apart from avoiding the above costs, are there benefits to changing it to something else? (For example, a better term could make the articles more interesting and intuitive to beginners than “koan” does.)
Knowing the kind of people who read LW, I guess that on reading “koan” more people will think about hacker koans than Zen kōans (also given no macron on the O).
In this case, it’s more like a “technical” (i.e. non-mainstream-English) use other than the original one.