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Luke_A_Somers comments on Harper's Magazine article on LW/MIRI/CFAR and Ethereum - Less Wrong Discussion

44 Post author: gwern 12 December 2014 08:34PM

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Comment author: shminux 12 December 2014 10:12:16PM 2 points [-]

Seems like a very interesting, if unflattering and often uncharitable look at CFAR and MIRI from the inside.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 12 December 2014 10:40:05PM *  0 points [-]

I am somewhat amused that the author seems to me to emphasize the peculiarities of their communication styles when the author has such downright awkward, disjointed and mashed-together style. Eliezer's faults do not include lack of facility with paragraph structure.

Comment author: Vulture 12 December 2014 11:27:54PM 3 points [-]

In addition to what gwern said, it's worth bearing in mind that Harper's is a very literary sort of magazine, and its typical style is thus somewhat less straightforward than most news.

Comment author: gwern 12 December 2014 10:55:09PM 6 points [-]

when the author has such downright awkward, disjointed and mashed-together style

Some of that may be the fault of my excerpting/editing. There were so many short paragraphs I felt I had to combine a bunch for HTML presentation (little paragraphs may work well in a double-column narrow magazine layout, but in a single column wide layout? not so much), and I tried to cut as much material as possible (otherwise there's no point in excerpting and I should've just left it as a pointer to the PDF).

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 15 December 2014 01:58:26PM *  0 points [-]

I see. Using ellipses would have helped.

Comment author: gwern 15 December 2014 04:57:33PM 1 point [-]

I did.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 15 December 2014 08:55:17PM 0 points [-]

Hmm. So you did. They didn't make anything like full impact since they were not accompanied by paragraph breaks.

Anyway, that mitigates but does not completely solve the author's style issues.

Comment author: Manfred 13 December 2014 05:20:03AM *  0 points [-]

Oh. >:(

Well, have this additional upvote in addition to the frowny face.