I too would like to hear "how it works," because if I don't know how Eliezer thinks it works, it just sounds like he's defining the problem of Being a Great Researcher in the most intimidating way possible. Whatever way that may be. Inflating the problem like that is bad practice, for much the same reason that cheap gestures of humility are bad practice.

I'm commenting on a two-year-old post, so I guess I shouldn't expect a response, but this post is linked from the getting-started page, so I was a bit disappointed that it ended with what looks a lot like a handwave at humility.