From Costanza's original thread (entire text):
This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant.
Meta:
- How often should these be made? I think one every three months is the correct frequency.
- Costanza made the original thread, but I am OpenThreadGuy. I am therefore not only entitled but required to post this in his stead. But I got his permission anyway.
The problem is, EY may just be contradicting himself, or he may be being ambiguous, and even deliberately so.
I think his views could be clarified in a moment if he stated clearly whether this abstract computation is identical for everyone. Is it AC_219387209 for all of us, or AC_42398732 for you, and AC_23479843 for me, with the proviso that it might be the case that AC_42398732 = AC_23479843?
Your quote makes it appear the former.Other quotes in this thread about a "shared W" point to that as well.
Then again, quotes in the same article make it appear the latter, as in:
We're all busy playing EY Exegesis. Doesn't that strike anyone else as peculiar? He's not dead. He's on the list. And he knows enough about communication and conceptualization to have been clear in the first place. And yet on such a basic point, what he writes seems to go round and round and we're not clear what the answer is. And this, after years of opportunity for clarification.
It brings to mind Quirrell:
If you're trying to convince people of your morality, and they have already picked teams, there is an advantage in letting it appear to each that they haven't really changed sides.