The tones of the two articles are very different, and that affects how we perceive the (lack of) content.
I think part of it is that you’ve broken the rule about making high-status claims in public (or to put it another way, you’ve broken the show don’t tell rule). We all already know that you’re intelligent, curious, persuasive, a good researcher, etc etc. because we’ve read your highly impressive posts where you’ve compressed ridiculous amounts of research into a nice readable form backed up with a million references. But now you’ve made a post that’s all about how great rationality has been for you, and a lot of it involves rehashing how great you are. You didn’t just improve Common Sense Atheism’s traffic, you made it one of the most popular atheism blogs on the internet. You didn’t just start working on x-risk, you were appointed Executive Director of SingInst. You haven’t just made progress against akrasia, you’ve mastered the algorithm. And so on.
Compare to the other post, where we didn’t already have overwhelming evidence of awesomeness and the tone is much more humble.
I also have a strong dislike of linkspam without supporting content and particularly disliked most of the linking in the last paragraph, but that’s probably more of a personal thing.
You didn’t just improve Common Sense Atheism’s traffic, you made it one of the most popular atheism blogs on the internet. You didn’t just start working on x-risk, you were appointed Executive Director of SingInst. You haven’t just made progress against akrasia, you’ve mastered the algorithm.
But these things are true, at least the first two are. And knowing what Luke feels helped him in achieving these things is very good to know. Previously, I hadn’t known Luke did a ton of research in driving traffic to make Common Sense Atheism what it was, and I’m glad to know that.
The tones of the two articles are very different, and that affects how we perceive the (lack of) content.
I think part of it is that you’ve broken the rule about making high-status claims in public (or to put it another way, you’ve broken the show don’t tell rule). We all already know that you’re intelligent, curious, persuasive, a good researcher, etc etc. because we’ve read your highly impressive posts where you’ve compressed ridiculous amounts of research into a nice readable form backed up with a million references. But now you’ve made a post that’s all about how great rationality has been for you, and a lot of it involves rehashing how great you are. You didn’t just improve Common Sense Atheism’s traffic, you made it one of the most popular atheism blogs on the internet. You didn’t just start working on x-risk, you were appointed Executive Director of SingInst. You haven’t just made progress against akrasia, you’ve mastered the algorithm. And so on.
Compare to the other post, where we didn’t already have overwhelming evidence of awesomeness and the tone is much more humble.
I also have a strong dislike of linkspam without supporting content and particularly disliked most of the linking in the last paragraph, but that’s probably more of a personal thing.
But these things are true, at least the first two are. And knowing what Luke feels helped him in achieving these things is very good to know. Previously, I hadn’t known Luke did a ton of research in driving traffic to make Common Sense Atheism what it was, and I’m glad to know that.
The visceral reaction to a high-status claim has nothing to do with truth values.
Same here, but that doesn’t detract from any tone issues.