= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
smk comments on [SEQ RERUN] To Spread Science, Keep It Secret - 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 (14)
Not one of my favorites. I'm tempted to stick this one in a mental category called "Eliezer's BDSM Posts"--you know, the ones where he says he likes to imagine living in a world where various things are deliberately made difficult/painful/scary and everyone goes around wearing black leather vests (ok, I made up the part about the vests). Also a lot of his fun theory posts would go in this category.
I asked my brain "would it be cool to be a technomage" and my brain said yes so sorry but after the aforementioned careful analysis I'm going to have to side with Eliezer on this one.
I'd prefer the BDSM stuff than this. His conspiracy ideals are dubious.
"Keep it secret" just will not work this way.
Aye, not that the general idea "hijack the various stupidities of the human mind to spread raltionality/science" is itself bad, but i think this particular implementation is dubious.
Mostly because science is something anyone can do without the support of a central authority. Having a central authority and secrecy just invites people to betray it for the quick cash that one gets from a tell all memoir. Maybe we could hijack scarcity effects by actively changing the culture. Change the message to something like "Science is really hard, and you Mr.RandomPerson can't do it. The only people who can do anything of real scientific import are geniuses". (Yes yes this idea is probably crap) Somehow make science the realm of respectable elites, while turning rationality into something more akin to common sense. (Please don't make a joke about common sense being uncommon, we've all heard it)
Exactly. It is an inept attempt to harness a bias - it just wouldn't work in this instance.
Seems like MoR is working just fine, and that comes closer to the topic. He's explicitly not arguing here that we should keep science secret.
Maybe he does believe Conspiracy World should exist eventually, but this post by itself seems like extremely weak evidence. Vladimir earlier made an important distinction between the secrecy Eliezer might really practice and that of literal Eighth Level Physicists.
That seems to be an overt attempt at publicity... that's the opposite of secrecy.
Um, how recently did you read the linked post?
(emphasis in original)
Recently enough that your earlier MoR reference seems equally as flawed now.
...OK, what does the last sentence of the post actually mean? (Shouldn't "I am great" be the default interpretation? ^_^)
Well yea, but i think he has a good point. The popularizations really got out of hand lately, dumbing things down to the point where stupid person would want to do science (and a smart won't as much as before; we try to pursue things that we have special talents at; make it look like everyone can do it, and you just decrease the incentive for those few who actually can)