Strange7

Write It Like A Poem

Related to: simile, snobbery, adequate axioms Writing poetry is harder than it sounds, but easy to practice. Once mastered, the emotional impact it can add to even casual conversation makes it more than worthwhile. There are two sides to writing an effective poem: the top-down logic of metaphor and imagery, and the bottom-up mechanics of rhyme and meter. Manage both, or they won't meet in the middle. Let's say you're trying to lift someone as high up into the air as possible. You could kneel and cup your hands, but that depends on them playing along and stepping in the right spot. You could sneak up behind and kick them squarely between the legs, but that won't get them very far, or for very long, and they won't put up with such treatment more than once. Or you could build a framework, hang a swing, and give them a series of properly-timed pushes in the right direction. A pure technical explanation (the cupped hands) depends on the willingness of the reader to slog through the whole thing, do some independent research to fill any newly-discovered gaps in their knowledge base, and generally cooperate. Without that minimal enthusiasm, the most brilliant insights can and will be dismissed as "too long, didn't read." Aggressive proselytizing, at the other extreme, sacrifices content to put as few demands on the reader as possible. It is, accordingly, viewed as even worse than useless. An active offense, spam, something to be isolated and destroyed. Taking the time to lay out a pattern, a rhythm, means that people will have some reason to keep reading even if they don't know exactly what you mean. It's a comfortable set of boxes in which half-eaten ideas can be stored for later, or a resonant frequency to carry information until the full message can be compiled. Resonant frequencies can't create something from nothing. The Tacoma Narrows bridge wobbled for hours before finally collapsing; cumulative energy transfer from the wind over the course of those h

19Feb 16, 2011

Strange7

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Antidote to Pascal's Wager

Athe damns all those, and only those, who are excessively confident that Athe has any specific quality, including the quality of existence, or who consciously seek favor from Athe, whether in the form of political or moral sanction, overt supernatural boons, or even simple personal goodwill. For all nontrivial utility...

Sep 4, 2015-12

The Fox and the Low-Hanging Grapes

One day a clever, itinerant fox came upon a vineyard. Being unfamiliar with the local customs, and not wanting to make a fool of himself, he planted his haunches on a nearby hill and observed. In the morning of the first day he saw tortoises crawl lazily out of their...

Mar 6, 20122

How hard do we really want to sell cryonics?

For a lot of serious charitable causes, people expend tremendous resources on 'raising awareness' which probably, on net, accomplishes little or nothing for the cause it nominally supports. For cryonics, though, the technology already exists, the target audience can pay for it themselves, the main obstacle is genuine ignorance and...

Apr 29, 201110

Write It Like A Poem

Feb 16, 201119

Turing Test Tournament For Funding

It's always troubled me that the standard Turing test provides only a single-bit output, and that the human being questioned could throw the game to make their AI counterpart look good. Also, research and development gets entirely too much funding based on what sounds cool rather than what actually works....

Dec 17, 2010-4

Blood Feud 2.0

I've been thinking about the idea of culpability. What is it for, exactly? Why did societies that use the concept win out over those who stuck with the default response of not assigning any particular emotional significance to a given intangible abstraction? If I'm understanding correctly, a given person can...

Nov 29, 2010-2

Disconnect between Stated/Implemented Preferences

Currently, the comment for which I've received the most positive karma by a factor of four is a joke about institutionalized ass-rape. A secondhand joke, effectively a quote with no source cited. Furthermore, the comment had, at best, tangential relevance to the subject of discussion. If anyone were to provide...

Mar 17, 2010-5

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

Strange7

Strange7

Strange7

Write It Like A Poem

How hard do we really want to sell cryonics?

The Fox and the Low-Hanging Grapes

Blood Feud 2.0

Strange7

Antidote to Pascal's Wager

The Fox and the Low-Hanging Grapes

How hard do we really want to sell cryonics?

Write It Like A Poem

Turing Test Tournament For Funding

Blood Feud 2.0

Disconnect between Stated/Implemented Preferences

Write It Like A Poem

How hard do we really want to sell cryonics?

The Fox and the Low-Hanging Grapes

Blood Feud 2.0

Antidote to Pascal's Wager

The Fox and the Low-Hanging Grapes

How hard do we really want to sell cryonics?

Write It Like A Poem

Turing Test Tournament For Funding

Blood Feud 2.0

Disconnect between Stated/Implemented Preferences