Yeah, I agree that there’s no one who Pareto dominates Eliezer at his top four most exceptional traits. (Which I guess I’d say are: taking important weird ideas seriously, writing compelling/moving/insightful fiction (for a certain audience), writing compelling/evocative/inspiring stuff about how humans should relate to rationality (for a certain audience), being broadly knowledgeable and having clever insights about many different fields.)
This also sounds sort of like how I’d describe what Scott Alexander is among the Pareto-best in the world at, just that Scott is high-verbal while Eliezer is high-flat (to use the SMPY’s categorisation). But Scott’s style seems more different from Eliezer’s than would be explained by verbal vs flat.
Notably, I think I disagree with Eliezer on what his moat is! I think he thinks that he’s much better at coming to correct conclusions or making substantial intellectual progress than I think he is.
Buck’s comment upthread has a guess:
This also sounds sort of like how I’d describe what Scott Alexander is among the Pareto-best in the world at, just that Scott is high-verbal while Eliezer is high-flat (to use the SMPY’s categorisation). But Scott’s style seems more different from Eliezer’s than would be explained by verbal vs flat.
Notably, I think I disagree with Eliezer on what his moat is! I think he thinks that he’s much better at coming to correct conclusions or making substantial intellectual progress than I think he is.