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Maelin comments on The Singularity Institute's Arrogance Problem - Less Wrong Discussion

63 Post author: lukeprog 18 January 2012 10:30PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 19 January 2012 01:15:49AM 2 points [-]

Since EY claims to be doing math, he should be posting at least a couple of papers a year on arxiv.org (cs.DM or similar), properly referenced and formatted to conform with the prevailing standard (probably LaTeXed), and submit them for conference proceedings and/or into peer-reviewed journals. Anything less would be less than rational.

I agree, wholeheartedly, of course -- except the last sentence. There's a not very good argument that the opportunity cost of EY learning LaTeX is greater than the opportunity cost of having others edit afterward. There's also a not very good argument that EY doesn't lose terribly much from his lack of academic signalling credentials. Together these combine to a weak argument that the current course is in line with what EY wants, or perhaps would want if he knew all the relevant details.

Comment author: Maelin 19 January 2012 01:30:18AM 28 points [-]

For someone who knows how to program, learning LaTeX to a perfectly serviceable level should take at most one day's worth of effort, and most likely it would be spread diffusely throughout the using process, with maybe a couple of hours' dedicated introduction to begin with.

It is quite possible that, considering the effort required to find an editor and organise for that editor to edit an entire paper into LaTeX, compared with the effort required to write the paper in LaTeX in the first place, the additional effort cost of learning LaTeX may in fact pay for itself after less than one whole paper. It's very unlikely that it would take more than two.

Comment author: dbaupp 19 January 2012 02:12:35AM 5 points [-]

It is quite possible that, considering the effort required to find an editor and organise for that editor to edit an entire paper into LaTeX, compared with the effort required to write the paper in LaTeX in the first place, the additional effort cost of learning LaTeX may in fact pay for itself after less than one whole paper

And one gets all the benefits of a text document while writing it (grep-able, version control, etc.).

(It should be noted that if one is writing LaTeX, it is much easier with a LaTeX specific editor (or one with an advanced LaTeX mode))

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