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brilee comments on The Singularity Institute's Arrogance Problem - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (307)
To be honest, I've only ever felt SI/EY/LW's "arrogance" once, and I think that LW in general is pretty damn awesome. (I realize I'm equating LW with SI, but I don't really know what SI does)
The one time is while reading through the Free Will<http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Free_will> page, which I've copied here: "One of the easiest hard questions, as millennia-old philosophical dilemmas go. Though this impossible question is fully and completely dissolved on Less Wrong, aspiring reductionists should try to solve it on their own. "
This smacks strongly of "oh look, there's a classic stumper, and I'm the ONLY ONE who's solved it (naa naa naa). If you want to be a true rationalist/join the tribe, you better solve it on your own, too"
I've also heard others mention that HP from HPMoR is an unsufferable little twat, which I assume is the same attitude they would have if they were to read LW.
I've written some of my thoughts up about the arrogance issue here. The short version is that some people have strongly developed identities as "not one of those pretentious people" and have strong immune responses when encountering intelligence. http://moderndescartes.blogspot.com/2011/07/turn-other-cheek.html
I also think that HJPEV is a unsufferable little twat / horrible little jerk, but I love LW and have donated hundreds of dollars to SIAI. And I've strongly recommended HPMOR itself even when I warn people it has something of a jerk for a protagonist. Why shouldn't I ? Is anyone disputing that he's much less nice than e.g. Hermione is, and he often treats other people with horribly bad manners? If he's not insufferable, who is actually suffering him other than Hermione (who has also had to punish him by not speaking to him for a week) or Draco (who found him so insufferable in occasion that he locked him up and Gom-Jabbared him...)
And Hermione's tendency to pull this sort of stunt makes her even more insufferable than Harry. While I might choose to tolerate those two as allies and associate with them for sake of gaining power or saving the world I'd say Neville is the only actually likable character that Eliezer has managed to include.
Writing about characters that are arrogant prats does seem to come naturally to Eliezer for some reason.
To you maybe, but Hermione is well-liked by lots of other characters, SPHEW and her army and the professors. "insufferable know-it-all" is how Ron calls her in canon. In HPMOR she actually is nicer, less dogmatic and has many more friends than in canon. Compare canon SPEW with SPHEW, and how she goes about doing each.
Yes.
It is one thing to write about a character that is an arrogant prat that is perceived as an arrogant prat by the other characters. It is far more telling when obnoxious or poorly considered behavior is portrayed within the story as appropriate or wise and so accepted by all the other characters.
I'm not a huge fan of either of them to be honest. Although MoR!Hermione does get points for doing whichever of those two acronyms is the one that involved beating up bullies. Although now I'm having vague memories about her having a tantrum when Harry saved the lives of the girls she put at risk. Yeah, she's a pratt. A dangerous prat. Apart from making her controlling and unpleasant to be around that ego of hers could get people killed! And what makes it worse is that Hermione's idiotic behavior seems to be more implicitly endorsed as appropriate by the author than Harry's idiotic behavior.
I don't understand you. The rest of the paragraph seems to be arguing that this was irresponsible idiotic behavior on her part; this sentence seems to be saying it's a point in her favor.
I think you're significantly misremembering what she said -- she explicitly didn't mind Harry saving them, she minded that he scared the bejeezus out of her. Do you belong in that small minority of HPMOR readers who only read each chapter once? :-)
I approve of fighting bullying. I don't approve of initiating conflict when Harry saves their lives by pulling a Harry. Because his actions in that situation aren't really any of her business. Harry's actions in that scene are in acordance with Harry's Harriness and he would have done them without her involvement. They aren't about her (making this situation different in nature to the earlier incident pretending to be a ghost to stop a gossip.)
Citation needed. Actually for realz, not as the typical 'nerd comeback'. I want to know what chapter to start reading to review the incident. Both because that is one of the most awesome things Harry has done and because I do actually recall Hermione engaging in behavior in the aftermath of the incident that makes me think less of her.
Most significantly she makes Harry give an oath that makes me think less of Harry (and MoR) for submitting to. Because he made a promise the adherence to which could make him lose the fight for the universe! I've actually had a discussion with Eliezer on the subject and was somewhat relieved when he admitted that he wrote in the necessary clauses but omitted them only for stylistic reasons.
Chapter 75:
Well, Professor Quirrell seems to have taken quite a liking to him, but I don't think he counts...
I always assumed that this character detail was intentional, especially since some other characters call HP out on it explicitly.
Got a similar reaction. Well, except the donating dollars part. Though I'm not bothered so much by the way that HJPEV interacts with people but rather by his unique-snowflake/superhero/God-wannabe complex.
Ewww! That's hideous. It seems to be totally subverting the point of the wiki. I actually just went as far as to log in planning to remove the offending passage until I noticed that Eliezer put it there himself.
I'm actually somewhat embarrassed by page now that you've brought it to our attention. I rather hope we can remove it and replace it with either just a summary of what free will looks like dissolved or a placeholder with the links to relevant blog posts.
The point of that was that dissolving free will is an exercise (a rather easy one once you know what you're doing), and it probably shouldn't be short-circuited.
My point was that I didn't approve of making that point in that manner in that place.
I refrained from nuking the page myself but I don't have to like it. I support Brilee's observation that going around and doing that sort of thing is bad PR for Eliezer Yudkowsky, which has non-trivial relevance to SingInst's arrogance problem.
One issue is that the same writing sends different signals to different people. I remember thinking about free will early in life (my parents thought they'd tease me with the age-old philosophical question) and, a little later in life, thinking that I had basically solved it--that people were simply thinking about it the wrong way. People around me often didn't accept my solution, but I was never convinced that they even understood it (not due to stupidity, but failure to adjust their perspective in the right way), so my confidence remained high.
Later I noticed that my solution is a standard kind of "compatibilist" position, which is given equal attention by philosophers as many other positions and sub-positions, fiercely yet politely discussed without the slightest suggestion that it is a solution, or even more valid than other positions except as the one a particular author happens to prefer.
Later I noticed that my solution was also independently reached and exposited by Eliezer Yudkowsky (on Overcoming Bias before LW was created, if I remember correctly). The solution was clearly presented as such--a solution--and one which is easy to find with the right shift in perspective--that is, an answer to a wrong question. I immediately significantly updated the likelihood of the same author having further useful intellectual contributions, to my taste at least, and found the honesty thoroughly refreshing.