That’s true; I admit I didn’t read the sequence. I had a hard time struggling through the single summating essay. What I wrote was his conclusion. As Hanson wrote in the first comment to the essay I did read, Yudkowsky really should summarize the whole business in a few lines. Yudkowsky didn’t get around to that, as far as I know.
The summation essay contained more than 7,000 words for the conclusion I quoted. Maybe the rest of the series contradicts what is patent in the essay I read.
I simply don’t get the attraction of the sequences. An extraordinarily high ratio of filler to content; Yudkowsky seems to think that every thought along the way to his personal enlightenment is worth the public’s time.
Asking that a critic read those sequences in their entirety is asking for a huge sacrifice; little is offered to show it’s even close in being worth the misery of reading inept writing or the time.
You know, the sequences aren’t actually poorly written. I’ve read them all, as have most of the people here. They are a bit rambly in places, but they’re entertaining and interesting. If you’re having trouble with them, the problem might be on your end.
In any case, if you had read them, you’d know, for instance, that when Yudkowsky talks about simplicity, he is not talking about the simplicity of a given English sentence. He’s talking about the combined complexity of a given Turing machine and the program needed to describe your hypothesis on that Turing machine.
89 people (8.2%) have never looked at the Sequences; a further 234 (32.5%) have only given them a quick glance. 170 people have read about 25% of the sequences, 169 (15.5%) about 50%, 167 (15.3%) about 75%, and 253 people (23.2%) said they’ve read almost all of them. This last number is actually lower than the 302 people who have been here since the Overcoming Bias days when the Sequences were still being written (27.7% of us).
In addition, there are places in the Sequences where Eliezer just states things as though he’s dispensing wisdom from on high, without bothering to state any evidence or reasoning. His writing is still entertaining, of course, but still less than persuasive.
You know, the sequences aren’t actually poorly written. I’ve read them all, as have most of the people here. They are a bit rambly in places, but they’re entertaining and interesting. If you’re having trouble with them, the problem might be on your end.
The problem is partly on my end, for sure; obviously, I find rambling intolerable in Internet writing, and I find it in great abundance in the sequences. You’re more tolerant of rambling, and you’re entertained by Yudkowsky’s. I also think he demonstrates mediocre literary skills when it comes to performances like varying his sentence structure. I don’t know what you think of that. My guess is you don’t much care; maybe it’s a generational thing.
I’m intrigued by what enjoyment readers here get from Yudkowsky’s sequences. Why do you all find interesting what I find amateurish and inept? Do we have vastly different tastes or standards, or both? Maybe it is the very prolixity that makes the writing appealing in founding a movement with religious overtones. Reading Yudkowsky is an experience comparable to reading the Bible.
As a side issue, I’m dismayed upon finding that ideas I had thought original to Yudkowsky were secondhand.
Of course I understand simplicity doesn’t pertain to simplicity in English! (Or in any natural language.) I don’t think you understand the language-relativity issue.
If you were willing to point me to two or three of your favorite Internet writers, whom you consider reliably enjoyable and interesting and so forth, I might find that valuable for its own sake, and might also be better able to answer your question in mutually intelligible terms.
As a side issue, I’m dismayed upon finding that ideas I had thought original to Yudkowsky were secondhand.
Having to have original ideas is a very high standard. I doubt a single one of my posts contains a truly original idea, and I don’t try–I try to figure out which ideas are useful to me, and then present why, in a format that I hope will be useful to others. Eliezer creates a lot of new catchy terms for pre-existing ideas, like “affective death spiral” for “halo effect.” I like that.
His posts are also quite short, often witty, and generally presented in an easier-to-digest format than the journal articles I might otherwise have to read to encounter the not-new ideas. You apparently don’t find his writing easy to digest or amusing in the same way I do.
Affective death spiral is not the same thing as the Halo effect, though the halo effect (/ horns effect) might be part of the mechanism of affective death spiral.
Agreed… I think the Halo effect is a sub-component of an affective death spiral, and “affective death spiral” is a term unique to LW [correct me if I’m wrong!], while ‘Halo effect’ isn’t.
I don’t know any specific examples of secondhand ideas coming off as original (indeed, he often cites experiments from the H&B literature), but there’s another possible source for the confusion. Sometimes Yudkowsky and somebody else come up with ideas independently, and those aren’t cited because Yudkowsky didn’t know they existed at the time. Drescher and Quine are two philosophers who have been mentioned as having some of the same ideas as Yudkowsky, and I can confirm the former from experience.
I’m intrigued by what enjoyment readers here get from Yudkowsky’s sequences. Why do you all find interesting what I find amateurish and inept?
I find his fictional interludes quite entertaining, because they are generally quite lively, and display a decent amount of world-building—which is one aspect of science fiction and fantasy that I particularly enjoy. I also enjoy the snark he employs when trashing opposing ideas, especially when such ideas are quite absurd. Of course, the snark doesn’t make his writing more persuasive—just more entertaining.
he demonstrates mediocre literary skills when it comes to performances like varying his sentence structure
I know I’m exposing my ignorance here, but I’m not sure what this means; can you elaborate ?
Asking that a critic read those sequences in their entirety is asking for a huge sacrifice; little is offered to show it’s even close in being worth the misery of reading inept writing or the time.
Indeed, the sequences are long. I’m not sure about the others here, but I’ve never asked anybody to “read the sequences.”
But I don’t even know how to describe the arrogance required to believe that you can dismiss somebody’s work as “crazy,” “stupid,” “megalomanic,” “laughably, pathologically arrogant,” “bonkers,” and “insufferable” without having even read enough of what you’re criticizing the get an accurate understanding of it.
ETA: Edited in response to fubarobfusco, who brought up a good point.
That’s a fully general argument against criticizing anything without having read all of it, though. And there are some things you can fairly dismiss without having read all of. For instance, I don’t have to read every page on the Time Cube site to dismiss it as crazy, stupid, pathologically arrogant, and so on.
The reason EY wrote an entire sequence on metaethics is precisely because without the rest of the preparation people such as you who lack all that context immediately veer off course and start believing that he’s asserting the existence (or non-existence) of “objective” morality, or that morality is about humans because humans are best or any other standard philosophical confusion that people automatically come up with whenever they think about ethics.
Of course this is merely a communication issue. I’d love to see a more skilled writer present EY’s metaethical theory in a shorter form that still correctly conveys the idea, but it seems to be very difficult (especially since even half the people who do read the sequence still come away thinking it’s moral relativism or something).
That’s true; I admit I didn’t read the sequence. I had a hard time struggling through the single summating essay. What I wrote was his conclusion. As Hanson wrote in the first comment to the essay I did read, Yudkowsky really should summarize the whole business in a few lines. Yudkowsky didn’t get around to that, as far as I know.
The summation essay contained more than 7,000 words for the conclusion I quoted. Maybe the rest of the series contradicts what is patent in the essay I read.
I simply don’t get the attraction of the sequences. An extraordinarily high ratio of filler to content; Yudkowsky seems to think that every thought along the way to his personal enlightenment is worth the public’s time.
Asking that a critic read those sequences in their entirety is asking for a huge sacrifice; little is offered to show it’s even close in being worth the misery of reading inept writing or the time.
You know, the sequences aren’t actually poorly written. I’ve read them all, as have most of the people here. They are a bit rambly in places, but they’re entertaining and interesting. If you’re having trouble with them, the problem might be on your end.
In any case, if you had read them, you’d know, for instance, that when Yudkowsky talks about simplicity, he is not talking about the simplicity of a given English sentence. He’s talking about the combined complexity of a given Turing machine and the program needed to describe your hypothesis on that Turing machine.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/8p4/2011_survey_results/
23% for ‘almost all’
39% have read > three-quarters
54% have read > half
My mistake. I’ll remember that in the future.
In addition, there are places in the Sequences where Eliezer just states things as though he’s dispensing wisdom from on high, without bothering to state any evidence or reasoning. His writing is still entertaining, of course, but still less than persuasive.
I also found this to be true.
I’m pretty sure the 2011 survey puts this claim to the test, but I don’t have the time to look it up.
The problem is partly on my end, for sure; obviously, I find rambling intolerable in Internet writing, and I find it in great abundance in the sequences. You’re more tolerant of rambling, and you’re entertained by Yudkowsky’s. I also think he demonstrates mediocre literary skills when it comes to performances like varying his sentence structure. I don’t know what you think of that. My guess is you don’t much care; maybe it’s a generational thing.
I’m intrigued by what enjoyment readers here get from Yudkowsky’s sequences. Why do you all find interesting what I find amateurish and inept? Do we have vastly different tastes or standards, or both? Maybe it is the very prolixity that makes the writing appealing in founding a movement with religious overtones. Reading Yudkowsky is an experience comparable to reading the Bible.
As a side issue, I’m dismayed upon finding that ideas I had thought original to Yudkowsky were secondhand.
Of course I understand simplicity doesn’t pertain to simplicity in English! (Or in any natural language.) I don’t think you understand the language-relativity issue.
If you were willing to point me to two or three of your favorite Internet writers, whom you consider reliably enjoyable and interesting and so forth, I might find that valuable for its own sake, and might also be better able to answer your question in mutually intelligible terms.
Having to have original ideas is a very high standard. I doubt a single one of my posts contains a truly original idea, and I don’t try–I try to figure out which ideas are useful to me, and then present why, in a format that I hope will be useful to others. Eliezer creates a lot of new catchy terms for pre-existing ideas, like “affective death spiral” for “halo effect.” I like that.
His posts are also quite short, often witty, and generally presented in an easier-to-digest format than the journal articles I might otherwise have to read to encounter the not-new ideas. You apparently don’t find his writing easy to digest or amusing in the same way I do.
Affective death spiral is not the same thing as the Halo effect, though the halo effect (/ horns effect) might be part of the mechanism of affective death spiral.
Agreed… I think the Halo effect is a sub-component of an affective death spiral, and “affective death spiral” is a term unique to LW [correct me if I’m wrong!], while ‘Halo effect’ isn’t.
Are there specific examples? It seems to me that in most cases when he has a pre-existing idea he gives relevant sources.
I don’t know any specific examples of secondhand ideas coming off as original (indeed, he often cites experiments from the H&B literature), but there’s another possible source for the confusion. Sometimes Yudkowsky and somebody else come up with ideas independently, and those aren’t cited because Yudkowsky didn’t know they existed at the time. Drescher and Quine are two philosophers who have been mentioned as having some of the same ideas as Yudkowsky, and I can confirm the former from experience.
I find his fictional interludes quite entertaining, because they are generally quite lively, and display a decent amount of world-building—which is one aspect of science fiction and fantasy that I particularly enjoy. I also enjoy the snark he employs when trashing opposing ideas, especially when such ideas are quite absurd. Of course, the snark doesn’t make his writing more persuasive—just more entertaining.
I know I’m exposing my ignorance here, but I’m not sure what this means; can you elaborate ?
Indeed, the sequences are long. I’m not sure about the others here, but I’ve never asked anybody to “read the sequences.”
But I don’t even know how to describe the arrogance required to believe that you can dismiss somebody’s work as “crazy,” “stupid,” “megalomanic,” “laughably, pathologically arrogant,” “bonkers,” and “insufferable” without having even read enough of what you’re criticizing the get an accurate understanding of it.
ETA: Edited in response to fubarobfusco, who brought up a good point.
That’s a fully general argument against criticizing anything without having read all of it, though. And there are some things you can fairly dismiss without having read all of. For instance, I don’t have to read every page on the Time Cube site to dismiss it as crazy, stupid, pathologically arrogant, and so on.
The reason EY wrote an entire sequence on metaethics is precisely because without the rest of the preparation people such as you who lack all that context immediately veer off course and start believing that he’s asserting the existence (or non-existence) of “objective” morality, or that morality is about humans because humans are best or any other standard philosophical confusion that people automatically come up with whenever they think about ethics.
Of course this is merely a communication issue. I’d love to see a more skilled writer present EY’s metaethical theory in a shorter form that still correctly conveys the idea, but it seems to be very difficult (especially since even half the people who do read the sequence still come away thinking it’s moral relativism or something).