XiXiDu comments on Is an Intelligence Explosion a Disjunctive or Conjunctive Event? - Less Wrong
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Comments (15)
A note in passing while I read this: I really wish you would try and write in a plain and terse way, avoiding fancy words and constructions .... sentences like this:
... are hard to parse (does "in and of itself" correspond to a common word in German?).
(A bit that could have been skipped are those explaining infix operators)
Sorry for only commenting about the form, not the content - I'm not done reading the post yet; I find it somewhat laborious to read and am taking a breathing pause.
See the translation by muflax, "an sich" is what I am looking for. The best translations I could find are the following:
None of the above really express the German connotation though. I'll see what I can do.
I didn't do it on purpose. I will try to express myself in as simple terms as possible in future.
For what it's worth, I didn't think you were doing it on purpose - your post doesn't have the use-fancy-words-to-get-a-good-grade vibe one sometimes encounters on the 'net from people whose writing has been warped by the education system.
French writers have a similar problem of accidentally sounding too formal: many French word have a direct equivalent (cognate) that is more formal (e.g. "mortal" instead of "deadly" though in that case there's also a subtle change of meaning).
I didn't find your style to be difficult to read. The quoted sentence is fine and in no way fancy. I review and write academic papers all the time so I know bad prose when I see it.