= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Vladimir_Nesov comments on Is Molecular Nanotechnology "Scientific"? - 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 (51)
You're signaling poorly for this community.
For example, starting your post with an all-caps sentence asserting that something is "undisputedly" true makes you look like a crank. It might be obviously true, or indisputably true, but if it were actually undisputed then why would you need to point it out? It would be like saying "THE SUN IS UNDISPUTEDLY BRIGHT AND HOT". This statement is true, but why does it deserve the all-caps treatment?
Similarly, "challenging" people to dispute an assertion sounds like you're setting up your arguments as soldiers to defend territory against enemies, which is generally frowned upon around here.
Signaling is not the problem here. Communication of inability to think clearly was quite reliable.
There's an interesting point to be had here, actually: there's an awful lot of signaling where the cost isn't correlated with the truth of the signal. It takes just as much effort to dress up true ideas is scientific-sounding language as false ones, for example. Maybe it's just me, but it seems that the distinction is usually drawn between cheap vs. costly signaling, rather than empty vs. demonstrative signaling.
The salient question is, signaling of what, not signaling in what sense.
Cheap signaling of undesirable qualities is indistinguishable from failure to expensively signal desirable qualities. (Edit: not really, but it's close enough for rock'n'roll.)