ciphergoth comments on Special Status Needs Special Support - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 May 2009 10:59PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (73)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: gwern 05 May 2009 12:12:06AM 0 points [-]

re: 'Special...'

I like Sagan's "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" formulation better.

And on a somewhat irrelevant note - Tolkien is great poetry? He's recitable, certainly, and his translations of 'The Pearl' or 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' are justly lauded; but his own poetry isn't too great.

('Sing hey! For the bath at close of day \ that washes the weary mud away...')

Comment author: ciphergoth 05 May 2009 07:38:04AM 2 points [-]

I agree, but you can say the same thing about the Bible. Neither are going to survive comparison with, say, Auden.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 May 2009 08:03:01AM 1 point [-]

Yup. I'm not comparing Tolkien to any of the legendary professional poets, I'm comparing Tolkien's fiction to the Book of Job.