I did not enjoy this. I did not feel like I got anything out of reading this.
However, this got curated and >500 karma, so I feel like I must be missing something. Can anyone inform me: Why did other people enjoy this? The best theory I can scrounge together is that this is “relatable” in some way to people in SF, like it conveys a vibe they are feeling?
If the goal is to evoke a sensation of disgust with the characters, then I guess you’ve succeeded for me. I already knew I would not like the sort of person described in this story, though, so I didn’t feel like I learned anything as a result, but I could see how something like that could be useful for others. I essentially just felt disgust the entire time reading this.
It fleshed out a lot of archetypes (e.g. “the person on the inside who thinks they’ll be in the right place at the right time”, “the person who feels they have had a meditation/emotional insight and this has gotten them over the intellectual hump of not building killing machines”, “the person who believes the AI may kill everyone but did an EV calculation and decided to make lots of money anyway” etc) and ways-the-future-could-go in way more detail than I’ve seen before.
There are many ideas in here that I’ve heard said offhand but never really dived into, and there’s something very informative and satisfying about seeing them painted in detail. Similar to the difference between a one-sentence description of a painting, and the actual painting.
Plus lots of fun and dramatic detail to how it’s all woven together.
These are some of the things that occur to me in answer to your question.
Yes, I felt much disgust and dismay reading it. I also feel that way about many parts of the real world!
I enjoyed a few things about it, but I think what brought it all the way from “oof, that was well written but I’m not sure I enjoyed the experience” to having some fun reading and mulling on it is that, as a writer, I’ve spent a long time trying to build out my repertoire for writing actually “bad” antagonist characters. (I think this improves the conflict in stories – when I succeed, it clearly increases beta reader engagement even if that engagement consists entirely of “WOW I HATE THEM SO MUCH” – and also, like, writing any characters at all who aren’t unbearably earnest Hufflepuffs was a challenge for me).
This story was a very vivid and memorable depiction of a way a person could be shaped that definitely isn’t anywhere near my current character repertoire, but feels self-consistent enough that I could imagine booting up my own version of a similar guy and writing him “in character” for a whole story without running into too many blank spots where I can’t model him at all. I’m on the lookout for more unlikeable antagonist archetypes to introduce in my current fiction project, so it’s good timing. It also felt...deep? Rich? Like I could dig into this imaginary person’s psychology and find more there (part of me is going “wow, who hurt you? what backstory can I give you so I feel a little sympathetic that you’re like this”, because I can write hateable antagonists a lot better if I manage to feel a little sympathetic to them).
…Apart from seeing it as inspiration for my own writing: it does feel like it captures a piece of reality and pins it down where I can look at it, and I appreciate that even when I don’t enjoy looking. (It’s plausible it might help me model real life people who aren’t earnest Hufflepuffs?) It’s speckled with in-jokes and references that entertained me a bit. The prose and metaphors were also, IMO, really well done and vivid, including some that made me laugh out loud. (In general I think making a character’s internal monologue funny is a writing strategy that makes them more engaging/readable even if they’re not likable, so I’m taking notes on that too.)
One way to say it is that I expect to still remember the story in five years time, and I appreciate stories with that property. I also expect to get different things out of it every couple years if I reread it, which is a measure of “writing quality” in my book.
But to try to be more specific:
I just wrote, while trying to talk about something unrelated to this story: “Many people today, especially high-level people in the bay area, seem to me sort of… abstract, dissociated, cobbled-together-on-purpose-via-conscious-understanding-of-algorithms compared to the people in older books and movies. I’d like more of the normal/historical human thing.” This… is a perception that’s been with me for awhile, but the story helped it click into slightly-better focus.
Also (not that central to what I liked about the story, but an example): at least two different people who’re in some way pushing AI development have told me privately about weird choices they made when hitting puberty, about how to set up their insides. I’m curious how common things like this are, since probably most people wouldn’t tell me, and about how they work. This is the first public discussion of such that I’ve personally bumped into, and I appreciate it.
I agree reading the story was some sorts of unpleasant, and it left me feeling… perturbed for a couple days. But it helped that I felt like the author had sound moral bearings, which made it less disorienting for me that the characters didn’t?
My girlfriend (who is not at all SF-brained and typically doesn’t read LessWrong unless I send her something) really enjoyed it and felt it was great because it helped her empathize with people in AI safety / LessWrong (makes them feel more human). She felt it was well-written, enjoyably written. It was something she could read without it being a task.
I personally don’t believe “writing quality” can be divorced from content, and if you shove a bunch of words together in a “masterful way” but don’t say anything, I don’t want to read that and therefore would call that bad writing.
Upon slightly more reflection, I think I can appreciate on an intellectual level the quality of the writing if the goal is to evoke disgust. People (myself included, on occasion) partake in Horror content, which is also traditionally a negative emotion. I haven’t heard of a Revulsion genre before, so I didn’t really consider that this might be a thing people pursue, but I would still be a little surprised if that was what most people got out of the post.
I would also be surprised if the source of all the upvotes was just that it is “”“high quality””” writing. I usually find LessWrong to be more focused on content, and I still want to know what other people see in this post.
I just went and read that one and found it interesting, yes!
That said, even if I’m unlikely to get a satisfactory response, I still want to ask. I would like to be able to better predict what other people like/think. And sometimes, I’ve even found that understanding someone else can help find new dimensions to appreciate :)
I did not enjoy this. I did not feel like I got anything out of reading this.
However, this got curated and >500 karma, so I feel like I must be missing something. Can anyone inform me: Why did other people enjoy this? The best theory I can scrounge together is that this is “relatable” in some way to people in SF, like it conveys a vibe they are feeling?
If the goal is to evoke a sensation of disgust with the characters, then I guess you’ve succeeded for me. I already knew I would not like the sort of person described in this story, though, so I didn’t feel like I learned anything as a result, but I could see how something like that could be useful for others. I essentially just felt disgust the entire time reading this.
It fleshed out a lot of archetypes (e.g. “the person on the inside who thinks they’ll be in the right place at the right time”, “the person who feels they have had a meditation/emotional insight and this has gotten them over the intellectual hump of not building killing machines”, “the person who believes the AI may kill everyone but did an EV calculation and decided to make lots of money anyway” etc) and ways-the-future-could-go in way more detail than I’ve seen before.
There are many ideas in here that I’ve heard said offhand but never really dived into, and there’s something very informative and satisfying about seeing them painted in detail. Similar to the difference between a one-sentence description of a painting, and the actual painting.
Plus lots of fun and dramatic detail to how it’s all woven together.
These are some of the things that occur to me in answer to your question.
Yes, I felt much disgust and dismay reading it. I also feel that way about many parts of the real world!
I enjoyed a few things about it, but I think what brought it all the way from “oof, that was well written but I’m not sure I enjoyed the experience” to having some fun reading and mulling on it is that, as a writer, I’ve spent a long time trying to build out my repertoire for writing actually “bad” antagonist characters. (I think this improves the conflict in stories – when I succeed, it clearly increases beta reader engagement even if that engagement consists entirely of “WOW I HATE THEM SO MUCH” – and also, like, writing any characters at all who aren’t unbearably earnest Hufflepuffs was a challenge for me).
This story was a very vivid and memorable depiction of a way a person could be shaped that definitely isn’t anywhere near my current character repertoire, but feels self-consistent enough that I could imagine booting up my own version of a similar guy and writing him “in character” for a whole story without running into too many blank spots where I can’t model him at all. I’m on the lookout for more unlikeable antagonist archetypes to introduce in my current fiction project, so it’s good timing. It also felt...deep? Rich? Like I could dig into this imaginary person’s psychology and find more there (part of me is going “wow, who hurt you? what backstory can I give you so I feel a little sympathetic that you’re like this”, because I can write hateable antagonists a lot better if I manage to feel a little sympathetic to them).
…Apart from seeing it as inspiration for my own writing: it does feel like it captures a piece of reality and pins it down where I can look at it, and I appreciate that even when I don’t enjoy looking. (It’s plausible it might help me model real life people who aren’t earnest Hufflepuffs?) It’s speckled with in-jokes and references that entertained me a bit. The prose and metaphors were also, IMO, really well done and vivid, including some that made me laugh out loud. (In general I think making a character’s internal monologue funny is a writing strategy that makes them more engaging/readable even if they’re not likable, so I’m taking notes on that too.)
One way to say it is that I expect to still remember the story in five years time, and I appreciate stories with that property. I also expect to get different things out of it every couple years if I reread it, which is a measure of “writing quality” in my book.
But to try to be more specific:
I just wrote, while trying to talk about something unrelated to this story: “Many people today, especially high-level people in the bay area, seem to me sort of… abstract, dissociated, cobbled-together-on-purpose-via-conscious-understanding-of-algorithms compared to the people in older books and movies. I’d like more of the normal/historical human thing.” This… is a perception that’s been with me for awhile, but the story helped it click into slightly-better focus.
Also (not that central to what I liked about the story, but an example): at least two different people who’re in some way pushing AI development have told me privately about weird choices they made when hitting puberty, about how to set up their insides. I’m curious how common things like this are, since probably most people wouldn’t tell me, and about how they work. This is the first public discussion of such that I’ve personally bumped into, and I appreciate it.
I agree reading the story was some sorts of unpleasant, and it left me feeling… perturbed for a couple days. But it helped that I felt like the author had sound moral bearings, which made it less disorienting for me that the characters didn’t?
My girlfriend (who is not at all SF-brained and typically doesn’t read LessWrong unless I send her something) really enjoyed it and felt it was great because it helped her empathize with people in AI safety / LessWrong (makes them feel more human). She felt it was well-written, enjoyably written. It was something she could read without it being a task.
Maybe I’m just not the target audience, but I also didn’t feel like I got much out of this story. It just seemed like an exercise in cynicism.
I mean, for one thing, the writing is quite high-quality for a blog post.
I personally don’t believe “writing quality” can be divorced from content, and if you shove a bunch of words together in a “masterful way” but don’t say anything, I don’t want to read that and therefore would call that bad writing.
Upon slightly more reflection, I think I can appreciate on an intellectual level the quality of the writing if the goal is to evoke disgust. People (myself included, on occasion) partake in Horror content, which is also traditionally a negative emotion. I haven’t heard of a Revulsion genre before, so I didn’t really consider that this might be a thing people pursue, but I would still be a little surprised if that was what most people got out of the post.
I would also be surprised if the source of all the upvotes was just that it is “”“high quality””” writing. I usually find LessWrong to be more focused on content, and I still want to know what other people see in this post.
tbh, I think you just saw an attempt at art you don’t like and you’re unlikely to get a satisfactory response. The only fiction I have written which I suspect you won’t find disgusting is this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/H4kadKrC2xLK24udn/the-maker-of-mind
I just went and read that one and found it interesting, yes!
That said, even if I’m unlikely to get a satisfactory response, I still want to ask. I would like to be able to better predict what other people like/think. And sometimes, I’ve even found that understanding someone else can help find new dimensions to appreciate :)
I have no navel and I must gaze, the short story.
lol