If you search the text of the book, e.g. with Google Books, you can see the four places where it appears and get a sense of the context and meaning. His talk of pyramids is similar to Eliezer’s Void or Musashi’s nameless virtue or God; seeing that connection should I think be enough to figure the rest out? Maybe? It’s a pretty deep piece of wisdom though so a lot of the meaning might not be immediately obvious. Hence my trepidation about explaining it; it’d take too long.
If it’s too deep to be understandable without explanation, and you don’t think it’s feasible to explain it here, then why did you put the quote up in the first place?
Heterogeneous audience and asymmetric costs/benefits to reading it: people who don’t get it aren’t harmed much by its presence, the few people who do get it should benefit quite a bit.
Shouldn’t a good pithy saying work in the opposite way ? The people who don’t get it walk away enlightened (or, at least, filled with curiosity regarding the topic), while the ones in the know are unharmed.
What’s the point of telling the chosen few something which they already know ?
It’s something that you could have derived if you’d thought to but didn’t, like Bayes’ rule. Once it’s pointed out you immediately see why it’s true and gain a fair bit of insight, but first you have to understand basic algebra. It’s basically like clichés like “be the change you want to see in the world” but on a higher level; most normal people don’t have enough knowledge to correctly interpret “be the change you want to see in the world”, and most smart people don’t have enough knowledge to correctly interpret “interpret every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with your soul”, but the few who do should benefit a lot.
In that case I’m voting down your quote, because, not being one of the Elect, I see no particular meaning in it. But if you wrote some sort of a Sequence on the topic, I might vote it up.
I think that’s the correct choice; the quote and quotes like it should be voted down to minus ten or so, because most people will get no benefit from it.
I am more likley to read heavily downovted quotes, simply for the sake of novelty, than quotes voted at −2 to 4 karma. I don’t think I’m in the benefit-receiving subset though.
I read strongly downvoted posts as well, but perhaps they have more than just novelty value. For a post that is merely bad, people usually stop downvoting it once it’s negative. But something voted to −10 or below is often bad in a way that serves as an example of what not to do. Heavily downvoted comments can be educational.
Yes, especially if I point them to it. Having it already sitting there with links is useful. There’s also a non-negligible subset of people that read my comments from my user page.
This might actually be the highest wisdom-to-length ratio I’ve ever seen in an English sentence. “Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have” from Jesus is also pretty high up there.
Italian is even more awesome: the proverb Piove sempre sul bagnato (lit. ‘it always rain on the wet’) says the same thing in eight syllables. :-)
(There was once a discussion in Italy about whether to stop teaching Latin in a certain type of high schools. Someone said that Latin should be taught because it’s the intellectual equivalent of high-nutrient food, giving the example of the proverb Homini fingunt et credunt and pointing out that a literal translation (‘People feign and believe’) would be nearly meaningless, and an actually meaningful translation (‘People make up things and then they end up believing them themselves’) wouldn’t be as terse and catchy. But ISTM that all natural languages have proverbs whose point is not immediately obvious from the literal meaning, so that’s hardly an argument as to why one particular language should be taught.)
Lolz, but the “how ye hear” part is actually an important nuance. (And sadly it doesn’t appear in a few of the other gospels I think.) ETA: Also the “seemeth to have” part is actually an important nuance. (And sadly it doesn’t appear in a few of the other gospels I think.)
Yeah, I couldn’t parse “how ye hear” into English. I mean, I turned it into “Heed how you listen: ” but that doesn’t have any poignancy, any poetry to it at all.
But that’s not as abstract and makes it seem like it’s literally only about money, rather than a general principle of credit assignment that has important implications for people who want to have better epistemic habits. That’s why the “take heed therefore how ye hear” part is important.
Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath good inductive biases, to him more evidence shall be given, and he shall have an abundance: but whosoever hath not good inductive biases, from him shall be taken away even what little evidence that he hath.
ETA: I feel like some pedantic snobbish artist going on about this sort of thing, it’s kinda funny.
What is Jesus even talking about? Arguing that capitalism leads to monopolistic capitalism? Arguing against economic inequality? Discussing utility monsters? Ordering followers to strengthen the economic inequality by giving to the rich?
Imagine the LW, after fall of civilization, became a cult of Eliezer, misquoting and taking out of context anything said at any topics… after destruction of internet, relying on the memories.
Probably because you’ve already heard that quotation with the whosoever. In the encoding scheme where 0 encodes the lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the encodings of all other messages start with 1, the lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody” have the shortest “length” in your sense of the word.
I’m talking about writing to memory, not reading from it. I don’t think it’s just because I’ve heard it with “whosoever”, I think it’s because “whosoever” is more poetic and distinct in context.
Aleister Crowley, Magick, Liber ABA, Book 4
Could you explain what you mean by that?
If you search the text of the book, e.g. with Google Books, you can see the four places where it appears and get a sense of the context and meaning. His talk of pyramids is similar to Eliezer’s Void or Musashi’s nameless virtue or God; seeing that connection should I think be enough to figure the rest out? Maybe? It’s a pretty deep piece of wisdom though so a lot of the meaning might not be immediately obvious. Hence my trepidation about explaining it; it’d take too long.
If it’s too deep to be understandable without explanation, and you don’t think it’s feasible to explain it here, then why did you put the quote up in the first place?
Heterogeneous audience and asymmetric costs/benefits to reading it: people who don’t get it aren’t harmed much by its presence, the few people who do get it should benefit quite a bit.
Shouldn’t a good pithy saying work in the opposite way ? The people who don’t get it walk away enlightened (or, at least, filled with curiosity regarding the topic), while the ones in the know are unharmed.
What’s the point of telling the chosen few something which they already know ?
It’s something that you could have derived if you’d thought to but didn’t, like Bayes’ rule. Once it’s pointed out you immediately see why it’s true and gain a fair bit of insight, but first you have to understand basic algebra. It’s basically like clichés like “be the change you want to see in the world” but on a higher level; most normal people don’t have enough knowledge to correctly interpret “be the change you want to see in the world”, and most smart people don’t have enough knowledge to correctly interpret “interpret every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with your soul”, but the few who do should benefit a lot.
In that case I’m voting down your quote, because, not being one of the Elect, I see no particular meaning in it. But if you wrote some sort of a Sequence on the topic, I might vote it up.
I think that’s the correct choice; the quote and quotes like it should be voted down to minus ten or so, because most people will get no benefit from it.
Do you consider it more than negligibly likely that the benefit-receiving subset will read a comment voted down to −10 or so?
I am more likley to read heavily downovted quotes, simply for the sake of novelty, than quotes voted at −2 to 4 karma. I don’t think I’m in the benefit-receiving subset though.
I read strongly downvoted posts as well, but perhaps they have more than just novelty value. For a post that is merely bad, people usually stop downvoting it once it’s negative. But something voted to −10 or below is often bad in a way that serves as an example of what not to do. Heavily downvoted comments can be educational.
Yes, especially if I point them to it. Having it already sitting there with links is useful. There’s also a non-negligible subset of people that read my comments from my user page.
This might actually be the highest wisdom-to-length ratio I’ve ever seen in an English sentence. “Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have” from Jesus is also pretty high up there.
Well let me impress you:
So heed this: whoever has, will be given to; and whoever has not, more will be taken from.
Exchanges like this make me wish we had a signalling-analysis novelty account, akin to reddit’s joke-explainer.
Italian is even more awesome: the proverb Piove sempre sul bagnato (lit. ‘it always rain on the wet’) says the same thing in eight syllables. :-)
(There was once a discussion in Italy about whether to stop teaching Latin in a certain type of high schools. Someone said that Latin should be taught because it’s the intellectual equivalent of high-nutrient food, giving the example of the proverb Homini fingunt et credunt and pointing out that a literal translation (‘People feign and believe’) would be nearly meaningless, and an actually meaningful translation (‘People make up things and then they end up believing them themselves’) wouldn’t be as terse and catchy. But ISTM that all natural languages have proverbs whose point is not immediately obvious from the literal meaning, so that’s hardly an argument as to why one particular language should be taught.)
Lolz, but the “how ye hear” part is actually an important nuance. (And sadly it doesn’t appear in a few of the other gospels I think.) ETA: Also the “seemeth to have” part is actually an important nuance. (And sadly it doesn’t appear in a few of the other gospels I think.)
Yeah, I couldn’t parse “how ye hear” into English. I mean, I turned it into “Heed how you listen: ” but that doesn’t have any poignancy, any poetry to it at all.
The rich get rich, but the poor stay poor.
But that’s not as abstract and makes it seem like it’s literally only about money, rather than a general principle of credit assignment that has important implications for people who want to have better epistemic habits. That’s why the “take heed therefore how ye hear” part is important.
Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath good inductive biases, to him more evidence shall be given, and he shall have an abundance: but whosoever hath not good inductive biases, from him shall be taken away even what little evidence that he hath.
ETA: I feel like some pedantic snobbish artist going on about this sort of thing, it’s kinda funny.
It’s conceivable that “take care” is also a clue that this process will just happen—it’s not your job to be taking advantage of those who have little.
What is Jesus even talking about? Arguing that capitalism leads to monopolistic capitalism? Arguing against economic inequality? Discussing utility monsters? Ordering followers to strengthen the economic inequality by giving to the rich?
Imagine the LW, after fall of civilization, became a cult of Eliezer, misquoting and taking out of context anything said at any topics… after destruction of internet, relying on the memories.
You can improve the wisdom to length ratio just by taking the “so” out of the whosoevers.
Edit: already done, and right below me too.
Length isn’t measured in number of letters, it’s measured in ease of memorization, the encoding scheme of the brain. “Whosoever” flows better.
Probably because you’ve already heard that quotation with the whosoever. In the encoding scheme where 0 encodes the lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the encodings of all other messages start with 1, the lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody” have the shortest “length” in your sense of the word.
I’m talking about writing to memory, not reading from it. I don’t think it’s just because I’ve heard it with “whosoever”, I think it’s because “whosoever” is more poetic and distinct in context.