Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on LW/OB Quotes - Fall 2009 - Less Wrong

2 Post author: thomblake 01 September 2009 03:11PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 September 2009 06:35:08AM 2 points [-]

Yeah, I also find that a touch disturbing. I have a rather large collection of OBLW quotes I've built up over the last few years, and needless to say, none of them are from me.

Comment author: Larks 02 September 2009 11:38:14PM 2 points [-]

Do you get enough per month/season to be constrained by the 5 posts/person/thread limit? If so, you might want to disregard that limit, ironically in the interests of reducing your own influence.

Comment author: anonym 03 September 2009 04:17:59AM -1 points [-]

That's funny. As if not having collected any quotes from your own writings is good evidence of something other than your having some humility, or that they're already all recorded in your writings, or that you can never really genuinely surprise yourself with an insight (and thus think it eminently quotable) unless you have a really bad memory.

On that topic, have others noticed that people very frequently say the silliest things when trying to be humble, making arguments with huge gaping holes that they could never not notice in practically any other context? It's an extremely common failure mode. I think most of us find it endearing though, which is probably why it's almost never commented on (argued against, perhaps, but not pointed out as 3 standard deviation below our norm stupidity).