Downvoted this for being very long, a sneering tone, and explanations that only work if you already know the topic. I worry that people will not vote sanely on this because they know who the author is.
Edit to clarify: I consider that worth downvoting in this instance because it reads as though it tried and failed to be more broadly accessible, in a way that turns me off as someone who is an interested MOP on the details of monetary policy.
I basically agree that it’s a much worse post than average for Eliezer. Also agree that it’s not particularly accessible, though I actually found it quite insightful to read after I’ve taken a class on international monetary policy, which I had taken between my first reading of this post, and now my second reading of this post.
I think a list of references to read before reading this dialogue, or a set of motivating sources that caused Eliezer to write this dialogue, would make it a lot better in my opinion. E.g. when Scott Alexander usually tries to respond to someone’s view, he extracts a bunch of key quotes from a bunch of articles he sees as representative, and then responds to it. I think something like this would aid this post significantly.
Edit: I upvoted the post because I found it relevant to a bunch of stuff I’ve been thinking about lately, but would have not upvoted this post had it been posted here when Eliezer first wrote it (since I was lacking a bunch of necessary context then)
I’ve only taken a really basic economics course, but found the explanations really straight forward and learned a lot. So I don’t think the topic is as hard to parse as you’d think.
(Alternatively, I may have misunderstood details, overlooked problems, and simply don’t have anything to contrast these statements to. This would make it harder to judge.)
The bank’s persona did however fall flat repeatedly and could have been a lot better by having realistic responses.
Downvoted this for being very long, a sneering tone, and explanations that only work if you already know the topic. I worry that people will not vote sanely on this because they know who the author is.
Edit to clarify: I consider that worth downvoting in this instance because it reads as though it tried and failed to be more broadly accessible, in a way that turns me off as someone who is an interested MOP on the details of monetary policy.
I basically agree that it’s a much worse post than average for Eliezer. Also agree that it’s not particularly accessible, though I actually found it quite insightful to read after I’ve taken a class on international monetary policy, which I had taken between my first reading of this post, and now my second reading of this post.
I think a list of references to read before reading this dialogue, or a set of motivating sources that caused Eliezer to write this dialogue, would make it a lot better in my opinion. E.g. when Scott Alexander usually tries to respond to someone’s view, he extracts a bunch of key quotes from a bunch of articles he sees as representative, and then responds to it. I think something like this would aid this post significantly.
Edit: I upvoted the post because I found it relevant to a bunch of stuff I’ve been thinking about lately, but would have not upvoted this post had it been posted here when Eliezer first wrote it (since I was lacking a bunch of necessary context then)
I’ve only taken a really basic economics course, but found the explanations really straight forward and learned a lot. So I don’t think the topic is as hard to parse as you’d think.
(Alternatively, I may have misunderstood details, overlooked problems, and simply don’t have anything to contrast these statements to. This would make it harder to judge.)
The bank’s persona did however fall flat repeatedly and could have been a lot better by having realistic responses.