= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
wedrifid comments on Best career models for doing research? - 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 (999)
Total agreement here. In Eliezer's words:
A fellow called George Orwell.
Ahh, thankyou.
I presume you're not a native English speaker then - pretty much any moderately intelligent native English speaker has been forced to familiarity with 1984 at school. (When governments in the UK are being particularly authoritarian, there is often a call to send MPs copies of 1984 with a note "This is not a manual.") Where are you from? Also, you really should read the book, then lots of the commentary on it :-) It's one of the greatest works of science fiction and political fiction in English.
I can tell you all about equal pigs and newspeak but 'memory-holing' has not seemed to make as much of a cultural footprint - probably because as a phrase it is rather awkward fit. I wholeheartedly approve of Orwell in principle but actually reading either of his famous books sounds too much like highschool homework. :)
Animal Farm is probably passable (though it's so short). 1984 on the other hand is maybe my favorite book of all time. I don't think I've had a stronger emotional reaction to another book. It makes Shakespeare's tragedies look like comedies. I'd imagine you'd have similar feelings about it based on what I've read of your comments here.
That's some high praise there.
So I take it there isn't a romantic 'happily ever after' ending? :P
Actually, there is... ;)
Both are short and enjoyable- I strongly recommend checking them out from a library or picking up a copy.
Read them. They're actually really good books. His less-famous ones are not as brilliant, but are good too.
(We were taught 1984 in school, I promptly read to the end with eyes wide. I promptly borrowed Animal Farm of my own accord.)
His less-famous novels aren't as good. On the other hand, some of his essays are among the clearest, most intelligent thinking I've ever come across, and would probably be of a lot of interest to LessWrong readers...
Oh yeah. Politics and the English Language is a classic on a par with the great two novels. I first read that in 1992 and wanted to print copies to distribute everywhere (we didn't have internet then).
I'm terribly curious now -- did the use of any of the phrases Orwell singles out in the article actually drop significantly after the article was published? Wikipedia will not say...
Well, reading it in the 1990s and having a burnt-out ex-Communist for a housemate at the time, I fear I recognised far too many of the cliches therein as current in those circles ;-)
Yeah, that's one of those I was thinking of. Also things like the piece about the PEN 'anti-censorship' event that wasn't, and his analysis of James Burnham's Managerialist writing...
Because this is LessWrong -- you can give a sane response and not only does it clear the air, people understand and appreciate it.
Cable news debating isn't needed here.
Sure we might still wonder if they're being perfectly honest, but saying something more sane on the topic than silence seems like a net-positive from their perspective.
By way of a reminder, the question under discussion was:
LessWrongers are not magically free of bias. Nor are they inherently moral people that wouldn't stoop to using misleading rhetorical techniques, though here they are more likely to be called on it.
In any case, an answer here is available to the public internet for all to see.