How well do the “Twelve Virtues” really work as an introduction? After having devoured the entire Yudkowskian canon, I can reread the “Virtues,” and it makes sense, and it’s beautiful, and I love it, but I’ve experienced poor results on the two occasions that I can remember pointing others to the document. (One person, already a scientific-rationalist type, was turned off by the poetry; for example, he objected to “curiosity seeks to annihilate itself,” saying that curiosity shouldn’t be extinguished. I said he was misinterpreting the line, which clearly refers to the answering of a specific question rather than the end of curiosity-in-general; he said it was just poorly-written. The other person, a New-Age spiritual type, just horribly misinterpreted the entire document.)
It worked well for me as an introduction; I read it shortly after finding Eliezer’s writing. But although it was useful to me, I was embarrassed by its style at the time and hesitated to recommend it to others at an epistemology reading group where I’d chosen some of Eliezer’s other writing to discuss.
How well do the “Twelve Virtues” really work as an introduction? After having devoured the entire Yudkowskian canon, I can reread the “Virtues,” and it makes sense, and it’s beautiful, and I love it, but I’ve experienced poor results on the two occasions that I can remember pointing others to the document. (One person, already a scientific-rationalist type, was turned off by the poetry; for example, he objected to “curiosity seeks to annihilate itself,” saying that curiosity shouldn’t be extinguished. I said he was misinterpreting the line, which clearly refers to the answering of a specific question rather than the end of curiosity-in-general; he said it was just poorly-written. The other person, a New-Age spiritual type, just horribly misinterpreted the entire document.)
It worked well for me as an introduction; I read it shortly after finding Eliezer’s writing. But although it was useful to me, I was embarrassed by its style at the time and hesitated to recommend it to others at an epistemology reading group where I’d chosen some of Eliezer’s other writing to discuss.
Right, this is the problem I’m getting at