Eliezer once complained that I wrote in an “obvious to Eliezer” style and should try to get beyond that. Well, I think what I’m doing is rational given my goals. Unlike Eliezer, whose plans depend on convincing a significant fraction of humanity that existential risk is something to take seriously and that his own approach for solving it (i.e., FAI) is correct, my current aims are mainly to answer certain confusing questions. I don’t see much benefit in spending a lot of effort trying to get people to understand my ideas, or even to convince them that my problems should interest them, unless there’s a reasonable chance they might contribute to the solution of those problems or point out where my ideas are wrong.
Or it might be that I’m just too lazy to write well and I’m rationalizing all this. :)
I’m surprised (and a tad disappointed) it got as high as 11! It casually assumes controversial, questionable premises and doesn’t clearly define what its thesis is.
What exactly did you learn, and what are the answers to all my questions?
Maybe it’s just too hard-core for the average LWer’s tastes? High score maybe corresponds to a combination of sufficiently clever but also somewhat down-to-earth?
If “down-to-earth” means “demonstrating a connection with reality”, then yes. There are some ideas here, but no definitions, examples, elaborations, or empirical support.
This is an extremely high-information-value article. I’m surprised it’s still only on 11.
Eliezer once complained that I wrote in an “obvious to Eliezer” style and should try to get beyond that. Well, I think what I’m doing is rational given my goals. Unlike Eliezer, whose plans depend on convincing a significant fraction of humanity that existential risk is something to take seriously and that his own approach for solving it (i.e., FAI) is correct, my current aims are mainly to answer certain confusing questions. I don’t see much benefit in spending a lot of effort trying to get people to understand my ideas, or even to convince them that my problems should interest them, unless there’s a reasonable chance they might contribute to the solution of those problems or point out where my ideas are wrong.
Or it might be that I’m just too lazy to write well and I’m rationalizing all this. :)
I’m surprised (and a tad disappointed) it got as high as 11! It casually assumes controversial, questionable premises and doesn’t clearly define what its thesis is.
What exactly did you learn, and what are the answers to all my questions?
Me too. I usually reread Wei Dai’s posts many times over months or even years, always finding new bits of insight that I missed the previous time.
Maybe it’s just too hard-core for the average LWer’s tastes? High score maybe corresponds to a combination of sufficiently clever but also somewhat down-to-earth?
If “down-to-earth” means “demonstrating a connection with reality”, then yes. There are some ideas here, but no definitions, examples, elaborations, or empirical support.