Words are minimum-viable coordination tools Words have a bewitching tendency as we assume they point to some deep essences. But, game theoretically speaking, words exist to get a job done so they operate at the level of coarse graining that’s sufficient to get the job done of the speaker. Evolution doesn’t like to waste energy. Hence all communication between people is a coordination tool where all parties are interested in getting their job done, but not wanting to invest more energy than it’s necessary to do so. So if someone uses the word “God” or “Love”, the job is done if it elicits the emotions, actions and associations roughly associated with what the speaker intended so our search for what those words “truly” mean is just misguided. Meaning is in what the exchange does in a particular context. By themselves, words are empty. A lot of philosophy is misguided in that sense where we end up attributing more depth to words than they contain. This suggests a guiding principle: focus on what words do and not what they mean. For example, when someone says “that’s not fair!”, don’t ask what fairness truly is. Ask: what is this utterance doing? (Signaling displeasure? Requesting redistribution? Trying to game the system? Pointing to a flaw in current scheme of things?) /syndicated