= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
ciphergoth comments on Eliezer's Sequences and Mainstream Academia - 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 (153)
I hadn't expected you to disagree with that tweet, so I'm clearly getting something wrong. I wrote that in the hope that it would encourage people to read the Sequences, not put them off - I think people imagine it as this million-word work of revelation, but a very large part of what it is is a work of popular science - turning people on to good existing ideas in psychology and philosophy and biology and physics and suchlike. There is a great deal that is original and valuable in there, but I don't think of it as the majority of the material.
Thinking about it further though, this makes something of a nonsense of the original tweet, since it's hard to think what would count as "mostly original" by this standard. You might as well describe eg The Better Angels of Our Nature as "mostly not original" since it contains no original research but presents a synthesis of the research of others, building up to a common theme.
The problem I have is that if I say something that sounds positive about the Sequences, that's going to turn my friends off, since they already know I think well of them. By saying something that on first reading sounds negative, I might get their interest, but that only works if they go on to follow the link.
For example, they may be turned off if you came out and said "The sequences really aren't the parochial ramblings of an intellectual outcast, they are totally in accord with mainstream scientific thinking". But "mostly not original" conveys much of the same message by making a concession to the orthodoxy.
I do not understand this. What planet are your friends from? If you're tweeting to your friends, and they already know what you think of the Sequences, why are you tweeting about them to them?
They are from Earth. Because it would be great for me and for the world if more of my friends took an interest in this sort of thing, and if they have misconceptions that stand in the way of that I'd like to clear up those misconceptions.
I understand the goal; but not the action taken to achieve it. Negging the Sequences will get them to take more of an interest?