Comment author: cousin_it 30 March 2016 12:07:38PM *  4 points [-]

Harsh but mostly true, I think.

Many social movements base their popularity on texts that are basically free-form poems. Eliezer, Moldbug, Ayn Rand, even the Sermon on the Mount :-)

Comment author: formido 30 March 2016 06:13:07PM *  0 points [-]

...or like women's suffrage or abolition!

Not all poetry is equally valid or has equally defensible aims.

Comment author: komponisto 12 February 2015 08:00:42AM 7 points [-]

I'm extremely grateful for this post, and look forward to the rest of the sequence.

For me this is also of great personal relevance -- I too am among the "twice exceptional" (*), and am chagrined that this concept, as the Wikipedia article says, "has only recently entered educators' lexicon". You won't be surprised to know that (as I think we've even discussed before privately) Grothendieck's description of himself -- and his mathematical style, insofar as I understand it -- is also something that I identify with very strongly.

(*) illustrative anecdote: in 9th grade, I received a "D" in geometry during the same term that I won a state competition in that subject.

Comment author: formido 12 February 2015 05:51:41PM *  6 points [-]

Interesting. I also found this article extremely personally relevant. While not as big a contrast as your case, in 8th grade I got a D- in geometry and honors on the California Golden State Exam for geometry -- that last much to the amazement of my teacher, who was forced to present the award to me at assembly.

I also identify with the duality from the article of being an average thinker in the moment, but having very strong reasoning skills. It seems half the smart people I know are sharper than I am, but people regard my reasoning and verbal debate skills to be very good. I've never quite known how to reconcile this with how g seems to work.

Geometry award notwithstanding, I've never been good at math, though I was always put in the gifted math classes. Everyone knows kids who didn't study and still aced the exams -- some here are those kids. Whether I studied or didn't study, I would always get Cs and Ds. I never had enough time to finish the tests. When I took physics, the professor had a rule that you could take as long as you liked on exams; this let me get the highest grade in the class on every one.

I would love to be better at math, because it's important, but it's not intrinsically interesting to me. Today I'm a software developer and I learn whatever math I need, but what interests me is tools and efficiency through design and I prefer to work at the functional layer where the math I learned in high school and college isn't the longest lever.

Recently, due to articles on Less Wrong and such, I've come to realize that there are math subjects I probably do have an interest in, but they weren't the math foundations we grow up with, at least in the US. Continuous math is boring to me, but discrete math -- starting with probabilities -- I can find lots of programming and everyday uses for, so much so that I'm considering going back and finishing a probability and statistics degree.

Looking forward to the rest of this series.

Comment author: Gavin 03 July 2014 06:19:02PM 8 points [-]

Isn't that a necessary part of steelmanning an argument you disagree with? My understanding is that you strengthen all the parts that you can think of to strengthen, but ultimately have to leave in the bit that you think is in error and can't be salvaged.

Once you've steelmanned, there should still be something that you disagree with. Otherwise you're not steelmanning, you're just making an argument you believe in.

Comment author: formido 04 July 2014 06:25:57PM *  5 points [-]

If you take a position on virtually any issue that's controversial or interesting, there will be weaknesses to your position. Actual weaknesses. I thought the purpose of steelmanning was to find and acknowledge those weaknesses, not merely give the appearance of acknowledging weaknesses. If that's not right, then I think we need a new word for the latter concept because that one seems more useful and truth seeking. If you're stretching things beyond the domains of validity and using tricks, it sounds awfully like you're setting up straw men, at the very least in your own mind. Seems more debate club than rationality.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Open Thread, June 16-30, 2012
Comment author: Multiheaded 27 June 2012 01:50:43PM *  -1 points [-]

Also you miss the point utterly if I'm allowed to be politically correct when liberal, gee, maybe political correctness is a political weapon! The very application of such standards means that if I stick to it on LW I am actively participating in the enforcement of a ideology.

No! No! No! All you've got to do is speak the language! Hell, the filtering is mostly for the language! And when you pass the first barrier like that, you can confuse the witch-hunters and imply pretty much anything you want, as long as you can make any attack on you look rude. You can have any ideology and use the surface language of any other ideology as long as they have comparable complexity. Hell, Moldbug sorta tries to do it.

Comment author: formido 27 June 2012 06:22:17PM 4 points [-]

Moldbug cannot survive on a progressive message board. He was hellbanned from Hacker News right away. Log in to Hacker News and turn on showdead: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=moldbug

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