Yes, I think that’s a good guess about one of the things that goes wrong. It’s also, I think, almost exactly the thing that makes my writing especially valuable and nearly unique for the people who benefit a lot from it. The more of this kind of thing I have in a piece, the more the people who appreciate it really appreciate it, ’cause it’s like I’m actually looking at things and helping their minds get the hang of actually looking at things, and mostly people just don’t do that in writing, outside of maybe some poetry. But I think it’s really super duper important to be able to pay attention to what’s actually going on if you want to do the rationality stuff in the crucial moments when it matters, and not just in the ones where you managed to pattern-match to high level concepts about rationality things! (That’s what this whole program is about.) So one day I’d really like to get good at making bridges or something that reach all the way to the people who are just like “wtf is this weird poetry”. But in the mean time I hope I’m doing useful things for the people who are already pretty close to being able to pay attention to what’s actually going on.
Yes, I think that’s a good guess about one of the things that goes wrong. It’s also, I think, almost exactly the thing that makes my writing especially valuable and nearly unique for the people who benefit a lot from it. The more of this kind of thing I have in a piece, the more the people who appreciate it really appreciate it, ’cause it’s like I’m actually looking at things and helping their minds get the hang of actually looking at things, and mostly people just don’t do that in writing, outside of maybe some poetry. But I think it’s really super duper important to be able to pay attention to what’s actually going on if you want to do the rationality stuff in the crucial moments when it matters, and not just in the ones where you managed to pattern-match to high level concepts about rationality things! (That’s what this whole program is about.) So one day I’d really like to get good at making bridges or something that reach all the way to the people who are just like “wtf is this weird poetry”. But in the mean time I hope I’m doing useful things for the people who are already pretty close to being able to pay attention to what’s actually going on.
Yup, sounds right to me.