I find “epistemics” neat because it is shorter than “applied epistemology” and reminds me of “athletics” and the resulting (implied) focus on being more focused on practice. I don’t think anyone ever explained what “epistemics” refers to, and I thought it was pretty self-explanatory from the similarity to “athletics”.
I also disagree about the general notion that jargon specific to a community is necessarily bad, especially if that jargon has fewer syllables. Most subcultures, engineering disciplines, sciences invent words or abbreviations for more efficient communication, and while some of that may be due to trying to gatekeep, it’s so universal that I’d be surprised if it doesn’t carry value. There can be better and worse coinages of new terms, and three/four/five-letter abbreviations such as “TAI” or “PASTA” or “FLOP” or “ASARA” are worse than words like “epistemics” or “agentic”.
I guess ethics makes the distinction between normative ethics and applied ethics. My understanding is that epistemology is not about practical techniques, and that one can make a distinction here (just like the distinction between “methodology” and “methods”).
I tried to figure out if there’s a pair of suffixes that try to express the difference between the theoretic study of some field and the applied version, Claude suggests “-ology”/”-urgy” (as in metallurgy, dramaturgy) and “-ology”/”-iatry” (as in psychology/psychiatry), but notes no general such pattern exists.
Applied ethics is still ethical theory, it’s just that applied ethics is about specific ethical topics, e.g. vegetarianism, whereas normative ethics is about systems of ethics, e.g. utilitarianism. If you wanted to distinguish theory from practice and be absolutely clear, you’d have to say something like ethical practices.
I prefer to say epistemic practices rather than epistemics (which I dislike) or epistemology (which I like, but is more ambiguous).
I don’t think the analogy between epistemics and athletics is obvious, and I would be surprised if even 1% of the people who have ever used the term epistemics have made that connection before.
I am very wary of terms that are never defined or explained. It is easy for people to assume they know what they mean, that there’s a shared meaning everyone agrees on. I really don’t know what epistemics means and I’m only assuming it means epistemic practices.
I fear that there’s a realistic chance if I started to ask different people to define epistemics, we would quickly uncover that different people have different and incompatible definitions. For example, some people might think of it as epistemic practices and some people might think of it as epistemological theory.
I am more anti-jargon and anti-acronyms than a lot of people. Really common acronyms, like AI or LGBT, or acronyms where the acronym is far better known than the spelled-out version, like NASA or DVD, are, of course, absolutely fine. PASTA and ASARA are egregious.
I’m such an anti-acronym fanatic I even spell out artificial general intelligence (AGI) and large language model (LLM) whenever I use them for the first time in a post.
My biggest problem with jargon is that nobody knows what it means. The in-group who is supposed to know what it means also doesn’t know what it means. They think they do, but they’re just fooling themselves. Ask them probing questions, and they’ll start to disagree and fight about the definition. This isn’t always true, but it’s true often enough to make me suspicious of jargon.
Jargon can be useful, but it should be defined, and you should give examples of it. If a common word or phrase exists that is equally good or better, then you should use that instead. For example, James Herbert recently made the brilliant comment that instead of “truthseeking” — an inscrutable term that, for all I know, would turn out to have no definite meaning if I took the effort to try to get multiple people to try to define it — an older term used on effectivealtruism.org was “a scientific mindset”, which is nearly self-explanatory. Science is a well-known and well-defined concept. Truthseeking — whatever that means — is not.
This isn’t just true for a subculture like the effective altruist community, it’s also true for a field like academic philosophy (maybe philosophy is unique in this regard among academic fields). You wouldn’t believe the number of times people disagree about the basic meaning of terms. (For example, do sentience and consciousness mean the same thing, or two different things? What about autonomy and freedom?) This has made me so suspicious that shared jargon actually isn’t understood in the same way by the people who are using it.
Just avoiding jargon isn’t the whole trick (for one, it’s often impossible or undesirable), it’s got to be a multi-pronged approach.
You’ve really got to give examples of things. Examples are probably more important than definitions. Think about when you’re trying to learn a card game, a board game, or a parlour game (like charades). The instructions can be very precise and accurate, but reading the instructions out loud often makes half the table go googly-eyed and start shaking their heads. If the instructions contain even one example, or if you can watch one round of play, that’s so much more useful than a precise “definition” of the game. Examples, examples, examples.
Also, just say it simpler. Speak plainly. Instead of ASANA, why not AI doing AI? Instead of PASTA, why not AI scientists and engineers? It’s so much cleaner, and simpler, and to the point.
I find “epistemics” neat because it is shorter than “applied epistemology” and reminds me of “athletics” and the resulting (implied) focus on being more focused on practice. I don’t think anyone ever explained what “epistemics” refers to, and I thought it was pretty self-explanatory from the similarity to “athletics”.
I also disagree about the general notion that jargon specific to a community is necessarily bad, especially if that jargon has fewer syllables. Most subcultures, engineering disciplines, sciences invent words or abbreviations for more efficient communication, and while some of that may be due to trying to gatekeep, it’s so universal that I’d be surprised if it doesn’t carry value. There can be better and worse coinages of new terms, and three/four/five-letter abbreviations such as “TAI” or “PASTA” or “FLOP” or “ASARA” are worse than words like “epistemics” or “agentic”.
I guess ethics makes the distinction between normative ethics and applied ethics. My understanding is that epistemology is not about practical techniques, and that one can make a distinction here (just like the distinction between “methodology” and “methods”).
I tried to figure out if there’s a pair of suffixes that try to express the difference between the theoretic study of some field and the applied version, Claude suggests “-ology”/”-urgy” (as in metallurgy, dramaturgy) and “-ology”/”-iatry” (as in psychology/psychiatry), but notes no general such pattern exists.
Applied ethics is still ethical theory, it’s just that applied ethics is about specific ethical topics, e.g. vegetarianism, whereas normative ethics is about systems of ethics, e.g. utilitarianism. If you wanted to distinguish theory from practice and be absolutely clear, you’d have to say something like ethical practices.
I prefer to say epistemic practices rather than epistemics (which I dislike) or epistemology (which I like, but is more ambiguous).
I don’t think the analogy between epistemics and athletics is obvious, and I would be surprised if even 1% of the people who have ever used the term epistemics have made that connection before.
I am very wary of terms that are never defined or explained. It is easy for people to assume they know what they mean, that there’s a shared meaning everyone agrees on. I really don’t know what epistemics means and I’m only assuming it means epistemic practices.
I fear that there’s a realistic chance if I started to ask different people to define epistemics, we would quickly uncover that different people have different and incompatible definitions. For example, some people might think of it as epistemic practices and some people might think of it as epistemological theory.
I am more anti-jargon and anti-acronyms than a lot of people. Really common acronyms, like AI or LGBT, or acronyms where the acronym is far better known than the spelled-out version, like NASA or DVD, are, of course, absolutely fine. PASTA and ASARA are egregious.
I’m such an anti-acronym fanatic I even spell out artificial general intelligence (AGI) and large language model (LLM) whenever I use them for the first time in a post.
My biggest problem with jargon is that nobody knows what it means. The in-group who is supposed to know what it means also doesn’t know what it means. They think they do, but they’re just fooling themselves. Ask them probing questions, and they’ll start to disagree and fight about the definition. This isn’t always true, but it’s true often enough to make me suspicious of jargon.
Jargon can be useful, but it should be defined, and you should give examples of it. If a common word or phrase exists that is equally good or better, then you should use that instead. For example, James Herbert recently made the brilliant comment that instead of “truthseeking” — an inscrutable term that, for all I know, would turn out to have no definite meaning if I took the effort to try to get multiple people to try to define it — an older term used on effectivealtruism.org was “a scientific mindset”, which is nearly self-explanatory. Science is a well-known and well-defined concept. Truthseeking — whatever that means — is not.
This isn’t just true for a subculture like the effective altruist community, it’s also true for a field like academic philosophy (maybe philosophy is unique in this regard among academic fields). You wouldn’t believe the number of times people disagree about the basic meaning of terms. (For example, do sentience and consciousness mean the same thing, or two different things? What about autonomy and freedom?) This has made me so suspicious that shared jargon actually isn’t understood in the same way by the people who are using it.
Just avoiding jargon isn’t the whole trick (for one, it’s often impossible or undesirable), it’s got to be a multi-pronged approach.
You’ve really got to give examples of things. Examples are probably more important than definitions. Think about when you’re trying to learn a card game, a board game, or a parlour game (like charades). The instructions can be very precise and accurate, but reading the instructions out loud often makes half the table go googly-eyed and start shaking their heads. If the instructions contain even one example, or if you can watch one round of play, that’s so much more useful than a precise “definition” of the game. Examples, examples, examples.
Also, just say it simpler. Speak plainly. Instead of ASANA, why not AI doing AI? Instead of PASTA, why not AI scientists and engineers? It’s so much cleaner, and simpler, and to the point.