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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Neil Armstrong died before we could defeat death - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (34)
I don't usually ask this, but would at least one downvoter please explain the downvotes for this?
It doesn't have any content. It's just a news bulletin (which we would have all seen on TV anyway) with some emotions pinned on.
EDIT: Things rarely stay downvoted for long though. They tend to reach a minimum pretty quickly and then climb back up into the positive.
Unfortunately, due to insufficient vigilance.
It's melodramatic and vapid.
I feel like I just read a propaganda pamphlet, or maybe a transhumanist soap opera exerpt.
I strongly dislike this kind of distortion of facts when used for emphasis, even unrelated distant facts. In the context of this community, approving of such behavior seems disrespectful to Armstrong's memory. (See also this post on Overcoming Bias.)
Denotationally crazy political (namely, transhumanist) rhetoric in the title and body. No substantive on-topic content.
~150,000 other people died today, too. Okay, Armstrong was hugely more famous than any of them, probably the most famous person to die this year, but what did he do for rationality, or AI, or other LessWrong interests?(which I figure do include space travel, admittedly. Presumably he wasn't signed up for cryogenic preservation) the post doesn't say.
Yes, death is bad, and Armstrong is/was famous, possibly uniquely famous, but I don't think eulogies of famous people are on-topic.
Eulogies on arbitrary people might help with motivation, and if you're doing that you might as well chose one with a minor advantage like not needing a long introduction to make the reader empathize, rather than choosing purely at random.
Are you suggesting that putting eulogies of famous people on LessWrong is a good idea? That sort of sounds like justifying something you've already decided.
Not quite. I'm saying that GIVEN you want to spend a post reminding people that death is bad, talking about a single death might be more motivating then many. And that GIVEN you want to talk about the death of an arbitrary individual, you might as well chose one likely know to the reader than one that is not.
"One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic."
If you want to remind people that death is bad, agreed, the death of individuals you know or feel like you know is worse than lots of people you never met or even saw.
I have mixed feelings about this post. I upvoted it because I don't think it deserves to be that low, but will retract the upvote should it get positive.
Fact is, its point seems to be more about evoking emotions than about communicating information/insights somehow related to rationality that the intended audience might not already know, so I'm not sure it belongs on Less Wrong.
OTOH, he was the person whose death saddened me most since after the time Dennis Ritchie died, so... (OK, this also doesn't belong here.)