wedrifid comments on Rationality Quotes: December 2010 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Tiiba 03 December 2010 03:23AM

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Comment author: wedrifid 06 December 2010 08:36:00AM *  4 points [-]

How cute. Also, on a related note:

He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake
Oh, you better watch out
You better not cry
Better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Clause is coming to town

ie. I think the quote is unhealthily idealistic. An exhortation for good behaviour by means of conveying a false model of reality.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 December 2010 07:44:04AM 7 points [-]

HPMOR demonstrates:

1) People usually don't recognize faked genius as faked when they see it; they don't realize what's missing from "genius" characters in their fiction.

2) However, if you then show them real genius, they can recognize it as new, different, better, and important (though they may not realize what the added ingredient was).

Comment author: wedrifid 20 December 2010 07:53:05AM *  4 points [-]

This applies to stereotypical fiction 'genius' when compared to an actually clever fictional character. Yet I'm not so sure it applies to gaining real world reputation. In many fields it can be demonstrated that being recognized as a brilliant expert is not actually strongly correlated with domain performance but instead determined by social factors.

If you want to get a reputation for being brilliant gain a solid baseline proficiency in an area and then actually become brilliant at politics. Or, of course, choose one of the few fields where objective performance is hard to hide from.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 06 December 2010 09:12:59AM 0 points [-]

I knew you'd react to it that way.

I disagree.

Comment author: gwern 12 December 2010 03:43:09AM *  5 points [-]

I knew you'd react to it that way.

Sure, but unless you registered it beforehand at somewhere like http://predictionbook.com/, I'm afraid it doesn't count. Sorry! Maybe next time.

Comment author: wedrifid 06 December 2010 10:01:13AM 0 points [-]

I knew you'd react to it that way.

You were thinking of me as you wrote that? I'm flattered. :)

Comment author: RichardKennaway 06 December 2010 12:14:24PM 0 points [-]

Depends on what I was thinking. :-)

Comment author: wedrifid 07 December 2010 05:16:33AM 9 points [-]

Surprisingly enough it doesn't.