when making new words, i try to follow this principle:

label concepts such that the label has high association w situations in which you want the concept to trigger.^[1]

the usefwlness of a label can be measured on multiple fronts:

1. how easy is it to recall (or regenerate):
   1. the label just fm thinking abt the concept?
      1. low-priority, since you already have the concept.
   2. the concept just fm seeing the label?
      1. mid-priority, since this is easy to practice.^[2]
   3. the label fm situations where recalling the concept has utility?
      1. high-priority, since this is the only reason to bother making the label in the first place.

if you're optimising for b, you might label your concept "distributed boiling-frog attack" (DBFA). someone cud prob generate the whole idea fm those words alone, so it scores on highly on the criterion.

it scores poorly on c, however. if i'm in a situation in which it is helpfwl for me to notice that someone or something is DBFAing me, there are few semiotic/associative paths fm what i notice now to the label itself.

if i reflect on what kinds of situations i want this thought to reappear in, i think of something like "something is consistently going wrong w a complex system and i'm not sure why but it smells like a targeted hostile force".

maybe i'd call that the "invisible hand of malice" or "inimicus ex machina".

i rly liked the post btw! thanks!

1. ^{^}

   i happen to call this "symptomatic nymation" in my notes, bc it's about deriving new word from the effects/symptoms of the referent concept/phenomenon. a good label shud be a solution looking for a problem.

2. ^{^}

   deriving concept fm label is high-priority if you want the concept to gain popularity, however. i usually jst make words for myself and use them in my notes, so i don't hv to worry abt this.

here's the non-quantified meaning in terms of wh-movement from right to left:

$S:\underset{\text{image: rain inside your prospective thoughts}}{\underset{}{\underset{\text{image: you thinking}}{\underset{}{\text{I think}\underset{–}{\text{what}}}}\underset{\text{(circumfix time operator)}}{\underset{}{\text{it'll}\underset{–}{\text{what}}\text{tomorrow}}}\underset{\text{image: rain}}{\underset{}{\text{rain}}}}}$

for conlanging, i like${}_{95\%}$ this set of principles:

1. minimise total visual distance between operators and their arguments
2. minimise total novelty/complexity/size of all items the reader is forced to store in memory while parsing
   1. every argument in memory shud find its operator asap, and vice versa
   2. some items are fairly easy to store in memory (aka active context)
      1. like the identity of the person writing this comment (me)
      2. or the topic of the post i'm currently commenting on (clever ways to weave credences into language)
   3. other items are fairly hard
      1. often the case in mathy language, bc several complex-and-specific-and-novel items are defined at the outset, and are those items are not given intuitive anaphora.
      2. another way to use sentence-structure to offload memory-work is by writing hierarchical lists like this, so you can quickly switch gaze btn ii., c, and 2—allowing me to leverage the hierarchy anaphorically.

so to quantify sentence $S$, i prefer ur suggestion "I think${}_{55\%}$ it'll rain tomorrow". the percentage is supposed to modify "I think" anyway, so it makes more sense to make them adjacent. it's just more work bc it's novel syntax, but that's temporary.

$S^{\prime }:\underset{\text{image: rain inside your tentetative prospective thoughts}}{\underset{}{\underset{\text{(quantifier)}}{\underset{}{{\underset{–}{\text{what}}}_{55\%}}}\underset{\text{image: you thinking}}{\underset{}{\text{I think}\underset{–}{\text{what}}}}\underset{\text{(circumfix time operator)}}{\underset{}{\text{it'll}\underset{–}{\text{what}}\text{tomorrow}}}\underset{\text{image: rain}}{\underset{}{\text{rain}}}}}$

otoh, if we're specifying that subscripts are only used for credences anyway, there's no reason for us to invoke the redundant "I think" image. instead, write

it'll rain tomorrow${}_{55\%}$

in fact, the whole circumfix operator is gratuitously verbose!^[1] just write:

rain tomorrow${}_{55\%}$

$S^{\prime \prime }:\underset{\text{image: rain inside your tentetative prospective thoughts}}{\underset{}{\underset{\text{image: you tentatively thinking}}{\underset{}{{\underset{–}{\text{what}}}_{55\%}}}\underset{\text{(time operator)}}{\underset{}{\text{tomorrow}\underset{–}{\text{what}}}}\underset{\text{image: rain}}{\underset{}{\text{rain}}}}}$

1. ^{^}

   natlangs smh…^[2]

2. ^{^}

   tbh i wish we had an editor w optimised LaTeX keyboard shortcuts so we cud effortlessly use $\underset{\text{or undersets!}}{\text{underbraces}}$ wherever we fancy.^[3]

3. ^{^}

   additionally, we should just make much more use the dimensionality afforded to us by the editors we have.

   it's free cheap $\stackrel{\text{semiotic}}{\underset{\text{syntactic}}{\text{semantic}}}$ real-estate.

weird, i was intending that as a reply to @trevor's answer, but it got plopped as its own answer instead.

my brain is insufficiently flexible to be able to surrender to social-status-incentives without letting that affect my ability to optimise purely for my goal. the costs of compromise (++) btn diff optimisation criteria are steep, so i would encourage more ppl to rebel against prevailing social dynamics. it helps u think more clearly. it also mks u miserable, so u hv to balance it w concerns re motivation. altruism never promised to be easy. 🍵

Related recommendation: Inward and outward steelmanning — LessWrong

Imagine that you encountered a car with square wheels

Inward steelmanning: "This is an abomination! It doesn't work! But maybe with round wheels it would be beautiful. Or maybe a different vehicle with square wheels could be beautiful."

Outward steelmanning: "This is ugly! It doesn't work! But maybe if I imagine a world where this car works, it will change my standards of beauty. Maybe I will gain some insight about this world that I'm missing."

If you want to be charitable, why not grant your opponent an entire universe with its own set of rules?

I was very very terrible at introspection just 2 years ago. Yet I did manage to learn how to make very good games, without really introspecting for years later about why the things work that I did.

More specifically, I mean progress wrt some long-term goal like AI alignment, altruism, factory farming, etc. Here, I think most ways of thinking about the problem are wildly off-target bc motivations get distorted by social incentives. Whereas goals in narrow games like "win at chess" or "solve a math problem" are less prone to this, so introspection is much less important.