Tetronian comments on Hack Away at the Edges - Less Wrong

48 Post author: lukeprog 01 December 2011 01:26PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 01 December 2011 02:53:10PM 7 points [-]

Had I not known that this was a lukeprog post, I probably would've thought that it was written by Eliezer--this looks a lot like his writing style. Was that intentional?

Either way, excellent post. "Hack away the edges" is definitely a useful heuristic.

Comment author: MatthewBaker 01 December 2011 04:27:14PM 3 points [-]

This, I greatly appreciate the "trick my mind into thinking its reading Eliezer" tone of luke's writing.

Comment author: JoshuaFox 24 January 2012 08:12:59AM *  0 points [-]

Maybe. But it is actually a criticism of Eliezer, whose approach to solving the FAI problem, as far as I can make it out, does seem to be "getting smart people to sit in silence and think real hard about decision theory and metaethics."

Comment author: lukeprog 01 December 2011 05:53:51PM 2 points [-]

It wasn't intentional, but I wish it had been! Do other people get this sense? I believe I'd like to sound more like Eliezer. :)

Comment author: MatthewBaker 05 December 2011 04:55:34PM *  0 points [-]

The main heuristics I feel activate when I read this are

  1. Good feeling that this article will inspire people to work on an important problem, because I will send it around.
  2. Good feeling that this article will help people who do not get inspired easily to just get started and avoid Akrasia.

Both of which come often from Eliezer's articles often, but the main thing that jumped out at me was the seamless interweave of different parts of history (Edison/Polymath) to draw conclusions about needed future action. Which we see very often in the sequences especially when past scientists are used as examples.

Comment author: fiddlemath 02 December 2011 04:45:28AM 8 points [-]

It's clear, emphatic, fairly precise, and doesn't dance around the point it's trying to make - but without presenting too many ideas in too short a space. It's how you write if you're being careful to be understood and interesting. Most writing I encounter isn't like this at all -- computer scientists largely can't write -- and so it does have a family resemblance to Eliezer's writing.

Your voices are different enough that I don't think I'd confuse them.

Comment author: [deleted] 01 December 2011 10:10:05PM 4 points [-]

I'd rather you found your own voice.