I was not impressed by any means: It was so painful to watch that I had to stop after 15 minutes.
It is well possible that RK is competent, but his lack of confidence (or communication skill) made his numbers look like as if they would have been just pulled out of his behind. Additionally, his slowness of adequately reacting to EY’s questions left me very much underwhelmed.
Almost everyone I know is nerd, so this is my baseline for comparison.
A lot of nerds have excellent communication skills (although it does not necessarily make them popular) For example Eliezer always makes a very good impression. A lot of academic people are also excellent presenters and discussion partners.
One of my concrete problems with Razib was that he somehow felt the urge to immediately start to talk (even if what he said was loosely related to the question) and it looked like that he was grasping the question while he was talking. For example, Eliezer is very good at taking time before answering a question, compressing the answer and being completely relevant and focused.
The other issue was that every time he mentioned concrete data, he did it in a way that made it seem as if he would have made it up on the spot. Rationally, I may not have had the reason to doubt the numbers, but the nonverbal clues made me subconsciously telling to myself: “These figures are not reliable!”
Both of these problems were unrelated to nerdiness, as a lot of nerds simply don’t exhibit them, for example I thoroughly enjoyed diavlog between Eliezer and Scott Aaronson.
I was not impressed by any means: It was so painful to watch that I had to stop after 15 minutes.
It is well possible that RK is competent, but his lack of confidence (or communication skill) made his numbers look like as if they would have been just pulled out of his behind. Additionally, his slowness of adequately reacting to EY’s questions left me very much underwhelmed.
Yep, Paul Graham has an essay about that too: Why Nerds are Unpopular.
Almost everyone I know is nerd, so this is my baseline for comparison.
A lot of nerds have excellent communication skills (although it does not necessarily make them popular) For example Eliezer always makes a very good impression. A lot of academic people are also excellent presenters and discussion partners.
One of my concrete problems with Razib was that he somehow felt the urge to immediately start to talk (even if what he said was loosely related to the question) and it looked like that he was grasping the question while he was talking. For example, Eliezer is very good at taking time before answering a question, compressing the answer and being completely relevant and focused.
The other issue was that every time he mentioned concrete data, he did it in a way that made it seem as if he would have made it up on the spot. Rationally, I may not have had the reason to doubt the numbers, but the nonverbal clues made me subconsciously telling to myself: “These figures are not reliable!”
Both of these problems were unrelated to nerdiness, as a lot of nerds simply don’t exhibit them, for example I thoroughly enjoyed diavlog between Eliezer and Scott Aaronson.