Had I not known that this was a lukeprog post, I probably would’ve thought that it was written by Eliezer—this looks a lot like his writing style. Was that intentional?
Either way, excellent post. “Hack away the edges” is definitely a useful heuristic.
It’s clear, emphatic, fairly precise, and doesn’t dance around the point it’s trying to make—but without presenting too many ideas in too short a space. It’s how you write if you’re being careful to be understood and interesting. Most writing I encounter isn’t like this at all—computer scientists largely can’t write—and so it does have a family resemblance to Eliezer’s writing.
Your voices are different enough that I don’t think I’d confuse them.
The main heuristics I feel activate when I read this are
Good feeling that this article will inspire people to work on an important problem, because I will send it around.
Good feeling that this article will help people who do not get inspired easily to just get started and avoid Akrasia.
Both of which come often from Eliezer’s articles often, but the main thing that jumped out at me was the seamless interweave of different parts of history (Edison/Polymath) to draw conclusions about needed future action. Which we see very often in the sequences especially when past scientists are used as examples.
Maybe. But it is actually a criticism of Eliezer, whose approach to solving the FAI problem, as far as I can make it out, does seem to be “getting smart people to sit in silence and think real hard about decision theory and metaethics.”
Had I not known that this was a lukeprog post, I probably would’ve thought that it was written by Eliezer—this looks a lot like his writing style. Was that intentional?
Either way, excellent post. “Hack away the edges” is definitely a useful heuristic.
This, I greatly appreciate the “trick my mind into thinking its reading Eliezer” tone of luke’s writing.
It wasn’t intentional, but I wish it had been! Do other people get this sense? I believe I’d like to sound more like Eliezer. :)
It’s clear, emphatic, fairly precise, and doesn’t dance around the point it’s trying to make—but without presenting too many ideas in too short a space. It’s how you write if you’re being careful to be understood and interesting. Most writing I encounter isn’t like this at all—computer scientists largely can’t write—and so it does have a family resemblance to Eliezer’s writing.
Your voices are different enough that I don’t think I’d confuse them.
I’d rather you found your own voice.
The main heuristics I feel activate when I read this are
Good feeling that this article will inspire people to work on an important problem, because I will send it around.
Good feeling that this article will help people who do not get inspired easily to just get started and avoid Akrasia.
Both of which come often from Eliezer’s articles often, but the main thing that jumped out at me was the seamless interweave of different parts of history (Edison/Polymath) to draw conclusions about needed future action. Which we see very often in the sequences especially when past scientists are used as examples.
Maybe. But it is actually a criticism of Eliezer, whose approach to solving the FAI problem, as far as I can make it out, does seem to be “getting smart people to sit in silence and think real hard about decision theory and metaethics.”