Vaniver comments on Open Thread, October 7 - October 12, 2013 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Thomas 07 October 2013 02:52PM

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Comment author: Vaniver 17 October 2013 08:52:54PM 1 point [-]

I can't imagine a post that starts out with "Note: If you think the assertion is obvious, then this post may well not interest you." to be a good post on Lesswrong.

Most of the ones that I can think of are math-heavy. For example, I might write a post about "Value of Information is asymmetric because the different possible worlds are asymmetric," and I would not expect the body of that post to interest someone who thinks that assertion is obvious.

Comment author: ChristianKl 17 October 2013 09:08:30PM *  0 points [-]

For example, I might write a post about "Value of Information is asymmetric because the different possible worlds are asymmetric," and I would not expect the body of that post to interest someone who thinks that assertion is obvious.

I think that there might be people who think that the assertion is probably true. If I'm however interested in math I care not only about whether the assertion is true but also about whether your proof of the assertion is correct.

P!=NP is in some sense an obvious assertion but it's still very interesting to search for the proof. Proofs are interesting.