# Taboo words on this website2025-01-12I am sympathetic to the lesswrong social
norm of taboo words. Basically you avoid the usage of words that are not defined
in a clear way where everyone agrees on the definition. If you think somsone is
using a word without clear definition agreed by everyone, you can ask them to r
epeat their point without using this word.Taboo words on this websites: - can, p
ossible, because - On this website I almost will never say "X happened because
Y". I will almost never say "X is possible" or "X is impossible". - Saying "X
happened because Y" means in an alternate universe where X did not happen, Y wo
uld not have happened. - Especially when studying history it is difficult to c
onstruct this alternate universe thought experiment in a way everyone agrees wha
t the thought experiment should be, and what its outcome would be. (I accept tha
t in theory this thought experiment works fine. Human brains don't violate deter
ministic universe. It's just in practice we don't know how to get the outcomes o
f these experiments.) - In practice often multiple pre-conditions existed when
an event happened. The combination of those pre-existing conditions is not simp
le linear algebra, "A and B and C => Y", it's "f(A,B,C) => Y" for some poorly un
derstood f. - I prefer the phrases "causally upstream" and "caually downstream
" over the word "because". - There are different levels of "impossible". There
are events that would have required people to have different ideas or imaginati
ons in order to happen, there are events that merely required the right amount o
f funding or the right set of social bonds to form, there are events that requir
ed increased amounts of engineering resources, there are events that would strai
ght up violate the laws of physics if they happened. Unless an event would viola
te the laws of physics, I'm hesitant to say it is impossible. And if it violates
the laws of physics, I may be open to its possibility, human understanding of o
ur current physical laws is less than a century old, it could have exceptions.
- If nothing is impossible, then saying "X is possible" also conveys zero usefu
l information so I avoid saying it. - less, more - I will almost never say "X
is less" or "X is more". Scales are relative, and where exactly the middle of th
e scale gets defined to be is often a political question. I will almost always s
ay "X is less than Y" or "X is more than Y". This could be when referring to any
adjective. X could be more beautiful, powerful, wealthy, empathetic, knowledgib
le etc. than Y, but X will never just be more beautiful, powerful, wealthy, empa
thetic, knowledgible etc. period.