I got a lot out of this post, and it’s obviously very high quality, but I have one humble gripe.
“and why Eliezer had to actually crash a car before he viscerally understood what his physics books tried to tell him about stopping distance going up with the square of driving speed. (I helped Anna revise this—EY.)”
I feel as if the parenthetical statement at the end of the quoted text would be unnecessarily alienating to an outside reader. Maybe it’s that it feels unprofessional (I’m not really sure), but it seems like the kind of thing that would seem weird to me if I were reading this after having it sent to me by a friend. And this is definitely the kind of post I would send to a friend.
In other news, I agree vehemently about your point in the first footnote. I’ll definitely start using the “chess player” example when I’m explaining belief in belief to others.
Probably. When I first started reading Lw it took me a while I think to figure out EY, though it is a pretty obvious connection. Anyway, I don’t really think it’s a big deal, just that it might be sub-optimal.
I got a lot out of this post, and it’s obviously very high quality, but I have one humble gripe.
I feel as if the parenthetical statement at the end of the quoted text would be unnecessarily alienating to an outside reader. Maybe it’s that it feels unprofessional (I’m not really sure), but it seems like the kind of thing that would seem weird to me if I were reading this after having it sent to me by a friend. And this is definitely the kind of post I would send to a friend.
In other news, I agree vehemently about your point in the first footnote. I’ll definitely start using the “chess player” example when I’m explaining belief in belief to others.
The parenthetical is clearly there to show that she is not using this anecdote without EY’s permission, since it might be taken as status-reducing.
Yeah, but maybe it would have been better as a footnote. And would newer readers know what “EY” meant?
Given it’s right after an anecdote about someone whose name starts with “E”, I think they could make an educated guess.
Probably. When I first started reading Lw it took me a while I think to figure out EY, though it is a pretty obvious connection. Anyway, I don’t really think it’s a big deal, just that it might be sub-optimal.