wedrifid comments on Eliezer's Sequences and Mainstream Academia - Less Wrong

99 Post author: lukeprog 15 September 2012 12:32AM

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Comment author: ciphergoth 16 September 2012 10:40:10AM 7 points [-]

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.

Comment author: wedrifid 16 September 2012 10:53:17AM 7 points [-]

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.

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.