I’ll agree that it’s more than a little redundant, especially when I understood the point he was getting at in the first part. But how much of that is the fault of his writing here and how much of it is the fault of the fact that he’s written about the issue before? And, more importantly, if you were to hand this article to someone who knows nothing about Yudkowsky or Less Wrong, would that extra length help them? I’d argue that a lot of the article’s length comes from trying to avoid some of his most common problems—instead of referencing a post where he’d said something before, he would explain the concept from the ground up using a different metaphor. (which is good for those of us who don’t want to scrape through old Facebook rants)
Either way, in its current form it is definitely not out of place for rhetoric, and more than enough for Less Wrong.
I’ll agree that it’s more than a little redundant, especially when I understood the point he was getting at in the first part. But how much of that is the fault of his writing here and how much of it is the fault of the fact that he’s written about the issue before? And, more importantly, if you were to hand this article to someone who knows nothing about Yudkowsky or Less Wrong, would that extra length help them? I’d argue that a lot of the article’s length comes from trying to avoid some of his most common problems—instead of referencing a post where he’d said something before, he would explain the concept from the ground up using a different metaphor. (which is good for those of us who don’t want to scrape through old Facebook rants)
Either way, in its current form it is definitely not out of place for rhetoric, and more than enough for Less Wrong.
I agree it fits well here. However, it has a very different tone from other posts on the MIRI blog, where it has also been posted.