写作与思考2013lesswrong.com编辑精选
禁用你的词语（2008）
Taboo Your Words (2008)
导读
这篇讲的是“禁忌化你的词”：在讨论中暂时禁用“上帝”“信仰”“自由意志”“正义”等大词，迫使说话者把词替换成具体定义和描述，从而暴露真正的分歧。对写作者来说，它提醒我们抽象词容易掩盖不同含义，写作和论证应先澄清关键词。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
遇到争议或含混时，先把关键词“禁用”，改写成一句可检验的定义或具体描述，再继续论证。
- 02
少用“正义”“公平”“坏”这类高层抽象标签，直接说清你指的实例、标准和后果。
- 03
同一个词在不同人那里可能对应完全不同的概念，写作前先拆开定义，能避免假共识和假分歧。
- 04
“禁忌词”练习也能用于自我检查：删掉核心大词后，如果段落说不下去，说明论证还停留在口号层面。
HN 评论精选
同一个词可以因定义不同而支撑完全相反的论证，写作要先交代你用的是哪种定义。
这和“if-by-whiskey”修辞很像：如果你说的威士忌是魔鬼的毒酒、败坏无辜、废黜理性、毁掉家庭、让孩子没饭吃，那我当然反对；如果你说的是谈话的润滑剂、哲思之酒、好友相聚时的麦酒，能让人心里有歌、唇上有笑、眼中有满足，是圣诞的欢愉，是让老先生在霜晨步履轻快的酒，那我当然支持。同一个“威士忌”被两种定义拉出相反立场。
JackFr查看英文原文
Very similar to if-by-whiskey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey If when you say whiskey you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it. But, if when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman's step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life's great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.
抽象大词常因定义不同制造假分歧，精确表述才能让讨论落地。
我个人的沟通规则是：高层抽象语言是杀手。一旦出现冲突或困惑，想让沟通继续，就必须放弃高层词，改用精确表述；这很像文章说的“用定义替换词语”。我认为很多哲学/政治分歧的根源就是高层语言——大家用的定义不同。争论双方若避开“正义”“坏”“公平”等标签，直接说自己到底指什么，就能更快看清彼此同意和不同意什么；围绕高层概念的争论很少有用，因为可争的实质太少。文章说把“上帝”“信仰”设为禁忌词，让人讲清自己信什么、为什么信，这很对：有些宗教共用“上帝”“天堂”等词，概念却完全不同甚至不相容。高层语言利于快速沟通，但当彼此定义不同时，它极具误导性，是沟通的拦路石。
B-Con查看英文原文
One of my personal rules for communication is that high-level language is a killer. Whenever conflict or confusion arises, high-level words need to be abandoned in favor of precision if the communication is to go anywhere. This is very similar to the article's examples of replacing a word with it's definition. I believe that high-level language is the root of many philosophical/political disagreements because people simply use different definitions. When disagreeing parties avoid high-level labels (like "justice", "bad", "fair", and a plethora of others) and instead say exactly what they mean they can much more quickly realize exactly what they disagree and agree on. Arguments over high-level concepts rarely go anywhere useful because there's no substance to argue over. > The illusion of unity across religions can be dispelled by making the term "God" taboo, and asking them to say what it is they believe in; or making the word "faith" taboo, and asking them why they believe it. This is very true, and I can't believe some religions that people think are the same. They happen to use the same words, like "God", "heaven", etc, but the concepts are completely different and incredibly incompatible. High-level language is very useful for quick communication. But it's horribly misleading and is a complete road-block to communication when people have different definitions or ideas in mind. This seems really obvious, but it's sad how much religious, philosophical, and political discussions only center around high-level language.
把词义完全形式化未必能澄清问题，语言的实际使用和语境同样重要。
文中这种僵化的语言图景，类似早期维特根斯坦《逻辑哲学论》，可与后期维特根斯坦《哲学研究》以及德里达等对照。维特根斯坦后来拒绝“用形式定义说明词义”，因为这不准确描述语言的实际使用，反而让我们误解情境。“森林里树倒有没有声音？”Albert说“没有”就被读成伯克利式唯心论；Barry说“有”，踢石头反驳。问题是我们真想理解情境，还是只想把Albert和Barry辩到闭嘴？LessWrong上这种没完没了的论证，暗示是后者。而且文中有些断言很赤裸、很错：说“大多数哲学家”会建议他们定义“自由意志”，除非在维也纳学派会议上，大多数哲学家大概不会；哲学有很多提问方式。如果森林里的树没人能听见或看见，它还是“树”吗？还在“森林”里吗？真能“倒”吗？
scythe查看英文原文
The very rigid picture of language described here and used in this and many other lesswrong essays might be compared to early Wittgenstein (Tractatus), to be contrasted with later Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations), alongside Derrida and a litany of less famous philosophers. Of course, the reason Wittgenstein ultimately rejected this picture, as in rejected describing the meaning of words by formal definition, is that it doesn't accurately describe the way language is used in practice, and leads us to misunderstand situations. "Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound?" Albert: "no" => "Berkeleyan idealism makes sense" Barry: "yes => "I refute it thus!" kicks rock Of course, the question of course, is do we really want to understand the situation, or beleaguer Albert and Barry until they stop bothering us? The argumentum ad nauseum on lesswrong, by now an encyclopedia-sized blog, hints toward the latter. And there are plenty of bare, wrong assertions: >Most philosophers would advise Albert and Barry to try to define exactly what they mean by "free will", on which topic they will certainly be able to discourse at great length. "Most philosophers" probably wouldn't, unless you're at a conference of the Vienna circle. Philosophy admits a great many ways of approaching these questions. If a tree is in a forest and nobody can ever hear or see it, is it really a "tree"? Is it in a "forest"? And can it really "fall"? After all, all of the trees and forests and falling we refer to in natural language (this is an empirical claim) are ultimately derived from (this is actually a propter hoc fallacy, but that's inevitable) our real experiences of trees and forests, in which falling makes a sound (this is not a definition, but a description). This is a sort of lame analysis, but at least I'm not trying to dodge the question.
禁忌词会泄露隐含信息，但并非所有分歧都是词义模糊，也可能是观察/检测条件不同。
我觉得有意思的是：Taboo中被禁的词会泄露信息，帮助描述那个禁忌词，像渗透测试者查看robots.txt来发现管理员不想让爬虫看到的部分。但我不赞同“森林里树倒”这个例子。那个思想实验形成时，测量声振动只能靠人耳；把它扩展到所有声振动测量方式并不算大跨越。Albert可以说：树倒在无人森林里符合“此事件在介质中产生压力波”这一判定；Barry也能合理反问：如果森林里没有波探测器，我们怎么确定压力波产生了？换句话说，我不认为这里的表面分歧源自语言含混；无论抽象到哪一层，探测声波总需要某种观察者，这又回到原思想实验。
gabemart查看英文原文
I find this interesting. I particularly enjoy the idea of proscribed words in Taboo leaking information that helps describe the taboo word. It reminds me of a pentester checking robots.txt to see what parts of a website the admin doesn't want crawlers to see. However, I disagree with the "tree falls in the forest" example. The thought experiment was formed in a time when the only way to measure acoustic vibrations was with the human ear. I don't think it's any great leap to extend the conceit of the experiment to cover all forms of measuring acoustic vibrations. Albert may claim: A tree falling in a deserted forest matches [membership test: this event generates pressure waves in a material medium]. And Barry could quite reasonably reply: How can we be sure those pressure waves are generated if we don't have any wave detectors in the forest? In other words, I don't think this is a case where ambiguous language is the source of the apparent disagreement. No matter how far down the abstraction-chain you go, the detection of acoustic waves always requires an observer of some fashion, which brings us back to the sense of the original thought experiment.
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