I read some linguistics books a while back, and more recently I've been reading (against my better judgement) Mad Investor Chaos and the Woman of Asmodeus. So, I've been thinking about word length and concept importance a lot.
Question 1: Should we be picking one or two syllable words for phrases/concepts central to thinking better? Is the hit to interpretability (which LessWrong is not really optimised for as is) worth it? What other significant costs am I missing?
Question 2: Which phrases/concepts?
I'm sure this happens in many areas (maths, for one), but medical language is a pretty well-optimised system I know well. You might like to use it for inspiration:
Medicine: "72yo F BIBA with 3/7 hx SOB, CP. Chest clear, HS I+II+0. IMP: IECOPD"
English: 72 year old woman brought in by ambulance because she's been short of breath and had chest pain for the past 3 days. No noises were audible over her lungs with a stethoscope, both of her heart sounds were clearly audible with no added sounds. I think it's most likely this is being caused by an infection on top of a history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
I can kind of reverse-engineer most of that; what's the /7 mean?
Three of seven, three days in the last week. (I think)