Yeah, I agree I have lots of views that LessWrongers find dumb. My claim is just that it’s bad when those views are hard to communicate on account of the way LW is set up.
I think it’s not just the views but also (mostly?) the way you write them.
This is hindsight, but next time instead of writing “I think Eliezer is often wrong about X, Y, Z” perhaps you should first write three independent articles “my opinion on X”, “my opinion on Y”, my opinion on Z”, and then one of two things will happen—if people agree with you on X, Y, Z, then it makes sense to write the article “I think Eliezer is often wrong” and use these three articles as evidence… or if people disagree with you on X, Y, Z, then it doesn’t really make sense to argue to that audience that Eliezer is wrong about that, it they clearly think that he actually is right about X, Y, Z. If you want to win this battle, you must first win the battles about X, Y, Z individually.
(Shortly, don’t argue two controversial things at the same time. Either make the article about X, Y, Z, or about Eliezer’s overconfidence and fallibility. An argument “Eliezer is wrong because he says things you agree with” will not get a lot of support.)
Alternatively, it can happen that people will disagree with you on X, Y, but agree on Z. In that case you can still make an argument for “Eliezer is sometimes wrong” and only use the discussion on Z as an example.
As shminux describes well, it’s possible to write about controversial views in a way that doesn’t get downvoted into nirvana. To do that, you actually have to think about how to write well.
The rate limits, limits the quantity but that allows you to spend more time to get the quality right. If you are writing in the style you are writing you aren’t efficiently communicating in the first place. That would require to think a lot more about what the cruxes actually are.
Yeah, I agree I have lots of views that LessWrongers find dumb. My claim is just that it’s bad when those views are hard to communicate on account of the way LW is set up.
I think it’s not just the views but also (mostly?) the way you write them.
This is hindsight, but next time instead of writing “I think Eliezer is often wrong about X, Y, Z” perhaps you should first write three independent articles “my opinion on X”, “my opinion on Y”, my opinion on Z”, and then one of two things will happen—if people agree with you on X, Y, Z, then it makes sense to write the article “I think Eliezer is often wrong” and use these three articles as evidence… or if people disagree with you on X, Y, Z, then it doesn’t really make sense to argue to that audience that Eliezer is wrong about that, it they clearly think that he actually is right about X, Y, Z. If you want to win this battle, you must first win the battles about X, Y, Z individually.
(Shortly, don’t argue two controversial things at the same time. Either make the article about X, Y, Z, or about Eliezer’s overconfidence and fallibility. An argument “Eliezer is wrong because he says things you agree with” will not get a lot of support.)
Alternatively, it can happen that people will disagree with you on X, Y, but agree on Z. In that case you can still make an argument for “Eliezer is sometimes wrong” and only use the discussion on Z as an example.
As shminux describes well, it’s possible to write about controversial views in a way that doesn’t get downvoted into nirvana. To do that, you actually have to think about how to write well.
The rate limits, limits the quantity but that allows you to spend more time to get the quality right. If you are writing in the style you are writing you aren’t efficiently communicating in the first place. That would require to think a lot more about what the cruxes actually are.