FWIW, my sense is that it’s a bad paper. I expect other people will come out with critiques in the next few days that will expand on that, but I will write something if no one has done it in a week or two. I think the paper notices some interesting weak correlations, but man, it really doesn’t feel like the way you would go about answering the central question it is trying to answer and I keep having the feeling of it very much having been written to produce the thing that on the most shallow read will produce the most surface-level similar object in order to persuade and be socially viral, and not to inform.
Thanks! I already don’t feel as impressed by the paper as I was while writing the shortform and I feel a little embarrassed for not thinking through things a little bit more before posting my reactions, although at least now there’s some discussion under the linkpost so I don’t entirely regret my comment if it prompted people to give their takes. I still feel to have updated in a non-negligible way from the paper though, so maybe I’m still not as pessimistic about it as other people. I’d definitely be interested in your thoughts if you find discourse is still lacking in a week or two.
FWIW, my sense is that it’s a bad paper. I expect other people will come out with critiques in the next few days that will expand on that, but I will write something if no one has done it in a week or two. I think the paper notices some interesting weak correlations, but man, it really doesn’t feel like the way you would go about answering the central question it is trying to answer and I keep having the feeling of it very much having been written to produce the thing that on the most shallow read will produce the most surface-level similar object in order to persuade and be socially viral, and not to inform.
Thanks! I already don’t feel as impressed by the paper as I was while writing the shortform and I feel a little embarrassed for not thinking through things a little bit more before posting my reactions, although at least now there’s some discussion under the linkpost so I don’t entirely regret my comment if it prompted people to give their takes. I still feel to have updated in a non-negligible way from the paper though, so maybe I’m still not as pessimistic about it as other people. I’d definitely be interested in your thoughts if you find discourse is still lacking in a week or two.