Given the writing style, it seems to me that the author intended this piece to be read as a travelogue (“a trip to a far away land”) rather than an article that tries to explain something to the readers. It is my impression that he does not try to think about the subject matter, he tries to feel it as a traveler who accidentally wandered here. Thus the author writes about his experiences, pays attention to small and idiosyncratic things (instead of trying to analyze anything), short sentences and quick leaps of thought is probably the authors way to give reader a dizzying feeling which, I guess, was what the author was feeling during his trip to an unfamiliar place due to meeting so many people in a short period of time. So, I guess, the author didn’t care that much about whether his travelogue would give magazine’s readers an accurate and insightful understanding of MIRI, CFAR and LessWrong. Instead, he probably cared about conveying his emotions and experiences to his readers.
It seems to me that the author didn’t intend this piece to be thought of as a review of MIRI’s activities. It seems to be as much (or maybe even more) about his trip as it is about the community he visited. Once you put this piece in a travelogue reference class, some of its flaws seem to be simply peculiarities of the writing style that is typical to that genre.
A more analytical piece would have been more verbose and challenging. There isn’t exactly a lack of verbose and challenging intros to rationality. This fills a gap.
I’m sure the author consciously picked the kinds of impressions that he believes would be most relevant to readers, were they to make his journey. So when he describes, say, Eliezer’s body language, I suspect that body language really is remarkably odd (at least on first impressions), not that the author picked something small and idiosyncratic to remark on for no reason.
Where do you think that Eliezer’s body language is described as remarkably odd? If you mean “He wore glasses,
had a short, dark beard, and his heavy body seemed slightly alien to him.”, I’m not sure.
It might be a reference to the way Eliezer talks about his body and ideas about cryonics that only the brain matters.
I’m not sure to what extend that’s something typical for Eliezer as I never meet him in person. If it is, it’s a sign that normal emotional regulation is off. But then various people in this community aren’t neurotypical.
You can (or could) watch EY debating (e.g. w/ that presumptuous jaron lanier guy) over videoconference and like many less-polished speakers he has some visible tics while searching for a thought or turn of phrase while feeling under the gun + not wanting to lose his turn to speak.
Given the writing style, it seems to me that the author intended this piece to be read as a travelogue (“a trip to a far away land”) rather than an article that tries to explain something to the readers. It is my impression that he does not try to think about the subject matter, he tries to feel it as a traveler who accidentally wandered here. Thus the author writes about his experiences, pays attention to small and idiosyncratic things (instead of trying to analyze anything), short sentences and quick leaps of thought is probably the authors way to give reader a dizzying feeling which, I guess, was what the author was feeling during his trip to an unfamiliar place due to meeting so many people in a short period of time. So, I guess, the author didn’t care that much about whether his travelogue would give magazine’s readers an accurate and insightful understanding of MIRI, CFAR and LessWrong. Instead, he probably cared about conveying his emotions and experiences to his readers.
It seems to me that the author didn’t intend this piece to be thought of as a review of MIRI’s activities. It seems to be as much (or maybe even more) about his trip as it is about the community he visited. Once you put this piece in a travelogue reference class, some of its flaws seem to be simply peculiarities of the writing style that is typical to that genre.
Thank you for articulating this so well :-)
A more analytical piece would have been more verbose and challenging. There isn’t exactly a lack of verbose and challenging intros to rationality. This fills a gap.
I’m sure the author consciously picked the kinds of impressions that he believes would be most relevant to readers, were they to make his journey. So when he describes, say, Eliezer’s body language, I suspect that body language really is remarkably odd (at least on first impressions), not that the author picked something small and idiosyncratic to remark on for no reason.
Where do you think that Eliezer’s body language is described as remarkably odd? If you mean “He wore glasses, had a short, dark beard, and his heavy body seemed slightly alien to him.”, I’m not sure.
It might be a reference to the way Eliezer talks about his body and ideas about cryonics that only the brain matters.
The “slightly alien” thing and this:
I’m not sure to what extend that’s something typical for Eliezer as I never meet him in person. If it is, it’s a sign that normal emotional regulation is off. But then various people in this community aren’t neurotypical.
You can (or could) watch EY debating (e.g. w/ that presumptuous jaron lanier guy) over videoconference and like many less-polished speakers he has some visible tics while searching for a thought or turn of phrase while feeling under the gun + not wanting to lose his turn to speak.