I like reviews of imaginary books as much as the next guy, but I’m a bit miffed that you didn’t do it the cool way: by recounting a point from the book and then saying “the author is wrong and a moron, actually things are this way”, then doing the same for the next point and so on. This way the review wouldn’t come off as being fawning toward your own ideas (which let’s face it is a bit weird), and also the readers would get a valuable rationality exercise in figuring out who’s the moron in each instance. Bonus points if you yourself genuinely don’t know who’s the moron—that can elevate the whole thing into art.
Seems much more deceptive and dark-artsy to me; I disagree that’s “the cool way” (or if it is the cool way in some objective sense, those are the cool kids I’m avoiding like the plague). I’m also not into the idea of effortfully creating very wrong versions of views so that I can then have fun knocking them down.
The actual historical reason it’s structured this way is not because I was trying to optimize for coolness or convincingness or w/e but rather that I tried for three years to produce the fully-fledged sequence and it kept not happening and I decided it was better to get some kind of abbreviated version of the content out (rather than nothing) and this was the format that ended up allowing me to write it at all.
You don’t need to weaken your views, they can be criticized just fine as they are. My main criticism is that you believe in a kind of social contract that includes and benefits most people, but I think in reality there’s much more coercion, much more rules that benefit the powerful at the expense of everyone else. For example, the whole system of land ownership and rent would look very different if it was designed with majority interests in mind.
Mmm, I don’t think that anything that I’ve said in the essay contradicts that. Like, I think you have leapt to a stronger conclusion about what I believe in than what I actually believe.
(e.g. I don’t think the essay makes any claim resembling “the whole system of land ownership and rent was designed with majority interests in mind.” That’s sort of a strawman, in the sense that it’s much easier to knock down than what the essay actually says.)
There’s a big difference between “this system had no dealbreakers”/”this system was designed such that every participant was getting an epsilon more from participation than they expected from breaking its rules” and “this was designed to actively please the most people.”
”this system was designed such that every participant was getting an epsilon more from participation than they expected from breaking its rules”
I do agree with this as stated. But a system can be very coercive and still meet the letter of this (by making “what is expected from breaking the rules” really bad). So maybe you need a stronger statement.
Er, I’m not sure why I would need a stronger statement, since the essay is describing civilization, which includes very coercive systems.
(There’s an interesting sort of rhyme here with, like. It seems to me that your first comment implies a goal of entertainingness, when the essay was not written to be entertaining (so much as informative/hopefully enlightening; entertainment helps to achieve that but isn’t the primary thing to optimize for). And similarly, these later comments seem to imply a goal of describing how to achieve a good civilization, when the essay is simply trying to describe what civilization is, in practice (with the idea being that once you know what it’s made of, perhaps you’ll be more able to make it good). Your comments seem to me to want to dock points for missing targets that aren’t being aimed for in the first place.)
Yeah. To me your post first read like it was making a historical claim—about gradual voluntary self-disarmament. But maybe I misread and you only intended to make the smaller point about “getting epsilon more from participation”, in that case yeah, my criticism is off target and sorry.
It inspired me to add a line near the end, which I think should’ve been there in the original (so thank you):
There were two full chapters on slavery and conscription and indentured servitude, castes and patriarchy and institutional bigotry—all the various ways in which societies incorporate people into their machinery without respecting their dealbreakers, keeping them captive in roles they would not freely choose.
I like reviews of imaginary books as much as the next guy, but I’m a bit miffed that you didn’t do it the cool way: by recounting a point from the book and then saying “the author is wrong and a moron, actually things are this way”, then doing the same for the next point and so on. This way the review wouldn’t come off as being fawning toward your own ideas (which let’s face it is a bit weird), and also the readers would get a valuable rationality exercise in figuring out who’s the moron in each instance. Bonus points if you yourself genuinely don’t know who’s the moron—that can elevate the whole thing into art.
Seems much more deceptive and dark-artsy to me; I disagree that’s “the cool way” (or if it is the cool way in some objective sense, those are the cool kids I’m avoiding like the plague). I’m also not into the idea of effortfully creating very wrong versions of views so that I can then have fun knocking them down.
The actual historical reason it’s structured this way is not because I was trying to optimize for coolness or convincingness or w/e but rather that I tried for three years to produce the fully-fledged sequence and it kept not happening and I decided it was better to get some kind of abbreviated version of the content out (rather than nothing) and this was the format that ended up allowing me to write it at all.
You don’t need to weaken your views, they can be criticized just fine as they are. My main criticism is that you believe in a kind of social contract that includes and benefits most people, but I think in reality there’s much more coercion, much more rules that benefit the powerful at the expense of everyone else. For example, the whole system of land ownership and rent would look very different if it was designed with majority interests in mind.
Mmm, I don’t think that anything that I’ve said in the essay contradicts that. Like, I think you have leapt to a stronger conclusion about what I believe in than what I actually believe.
(e.g. I don’t think the essay makes any claim resembling “the whole system of land ownership and rent was designed with majority interests in mind.” That’s sort of a strawman, in the sense that it’s much easier to knock down than what the essay actually says.)
There’s a big difference between “this system had no dealbreakers”/”this system was designed such that every participant was getting an epsilon more from participation than they expected from breaking its rules” and “this was designed to actively please the most people.”
I do agree with this as stated. But a system can be very coercive and still meet the letter of this (by making “what is expected from breaking the rules” really bad). So maybe you need a stronger statement.
Er, I’m not sure why I would need a stronger statement, since the essay is describing civilization, which includes very coercive systems.
(There’s an interesting sort of rhyme here with, like. It seems to me that your first comment implies a goal of entertainingness, when the essay was not written to be entertaining (so much as informative/hopefully enlightening; entertainment helps to achieve that but isn’t the primary thing to optimize for). And similarly, these later comments seem to imply a goal of describing how to achieve a good civilization, when the essay is simply trying to describe what civilization is, in practice (with the idea being that once you know what it’s made of, perhaps you’ll be more able to make it good). Your comments seem to me to want to dock points for missing targets that aren’t being aimed for in the first place.)
Yeah. To me your post first read like it was making a historical claim—about gradual voluntary self-disarmament. But maybe I misread and you only intended to make the smaller point about “getting epsilon more from participation”, in that case yeah, my criticism is off target and sorry.
It inspired me to add a line near the end, which I think should’ve been there in the original (so thank you):