gwern comments on Justifiable Erroneous Scientific Pessimism - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 May 2013 08:37PM

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Comment author: gwern 09 May 2013 04:15:55PM 2 points [-]
  1. I dislike gjm's and your contempt for librarians. My favorite writer, Jorge Luis Borges, was a librarian. Being a librarian does not disqualify one from commenting.
  2. His rebuttal letter to Norbert Weiner was apparently thought worth publishing by Science, right after a Harvard physicist's letter and before another letter. This indicates that his thinking was hardly marginal, considered low-quality, or uninformed, and tells us what the thinking was like at the time - which is all the quote was supposed to do!
  3. Taube is hardly 'just' a libarian. See my reply to gjm.
Comment author: gjm 09 May 2013 11:04:43PM 2 points [-]

I dislike gjm's and your contempt for librarians.

My "contempt for librarians" is sufficiently fictional that I am happy to pay the 5 karma point penalty I am currently paying (on account of the very negative comment upthread) to reiterate: I do not have contempt for librarians, nor did I express contempt for librarians; you are drawing an incorrect inference and should update whatever mental model led you to draw it.

(I agree that private_messaging's comment is extremely silly, and I regret the fact that what I wrote seems to have encouraged it.)

Comment author: private_messaging 09 May 2013 06:26:03PM 0 points [-]

I think you misunderstood. No contempt for librarians - merely a surprise that a librarian would be honoured with a misinterpretation by crackpots.

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