= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
ciphergoth comments on Bloggingheads: Robert Wright and Eliezer Yudkowsky - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (127)
Maybe it's because his brain is so large that my mirror neurons have to fire three times faster to compensate, but I always get so frustrated when watching Eliezer discussing things with non-SIAI people. It's almost kinda painful to watch, because even though I wish someone would come along and pwn Eliezer in an argument, it never ever happens because everyone is more wrong than him, and I have to sit there and listen to them fail in such predictably irrational ways. Seriously, Eliezer is smart, but there have to be some academics out there that can point to at least one piece of Eliezer's fortress of beliefs and find a potentially weak spot. Right? Do you know how epistemically distressing it is to have learned half the things you know from one person who keeps on getting proven right? That's not supposed to happen! Grarghhhhhh. (Runs off to read the Two Cult Koans.) (Remembers Eliezer wrote those, too.) (God dammit.)
(And as long as I'm being cultish, HOW DEAR PEOPLE CALL OUR FEARLESS LEADER 'YUDKOWSKI'?!?!??!? IT COMPLETELY RUINS THE SYMMETRY OF THE ETERNAL DOUBLE 'Y'S! AHHH! But seriously, it kinda annoys me in a way that most trolling doesn't.)
Bear in mind that, like many good works of pop science, the vast majority of what the Sequences present is other people's ideas; I'm much more confident of the value of those ideas than of the parts that are original to Eliezer.
And who filtered that particular and exceptionally coherent set of "other people's ideas" out of a vastly larger total set of ideas? Who stated them in (for the most part) clear anti-jargon? I would not even go into the neighborhood of being dismissive of such a feat.
Originality is the ultimate strawman.
I don't mean to be dismissive at all - leaving aside original content like the FAI problem, the synthesis that the Sequences represent is a major achievement, and one that contributes to making the clarity of writing possible.