Yes, I agree. That’s why I like the analogy to composition: most of the songs you might write, if you were sampling at random from song-space, are terrible. So we don’t sample randomly: our search through song-space is guided by our own reactions and a great body of accumulated theory and lore. But despite that, the consensus on which songs are the best, and on how to write them, is very loose.
(Actually it’s worse, I think composition is somewhat anti-inductive, but that’s outside the scope of this thread)
My experience is that naming is similar. There are some concrete tricks you can learn—do read the C2 wiki if you don’t already—and there’s a little bit of theory, some of which I tried to share insofar as I understand it. But naming is communication, communication requires empathy, and empathy is a two-place word: you can’t have empathy in the abstract, you can only have empathy for someone.
It might help to see a concrete example of this tension. I don’t endorse everything in this essay. But it’s a long-form example of a man grappling with the problem I’ve tried to describe.
Yes, I agree. That’s why I like the analogy to composition: most of the songs you might write, if you were sampling at random from song-space, are terrible. So we don’t sample randomly: our search through song-space is guided by our own reactions and a great body of accumulated theory and lore. But despite that, the consensus on which songs are the best, and on how to write them, is very loose.
(Actually it’s worse, I think composition is somewhat anti-inductive, but that’s outside the scope of this thread)
My experience is that naming is similar. There are some concrete tricks you can learn—do read the C2 wiki if you don’t already—and there’s a little bit of theory, some of which I tried to share insofar as I understand it. But naming is communication, communication requires empathy, and empathy is a two-place word: you can’t have empathy in the abstract, you can only have empathy for someone.
It might help to see a concrete example of this tension. I don’t endorse everything in this essay. But it’s a long-form example of a man grappling with the problem I’ve tried to describe.