I was thinking more that you could try your hand at a writing style that communicates the same stuff but doesn’t annoy so many people. E.g. Bostrom writes about the same topics but seems to annoy people less often.
The primary failure mode of writing is that nobody reads it. I don’t know how to write like Bostrom in a way that people will read. I’m already worried about things like the tiling agents paper dropping off the radar.
Lots of people read Bostrom. And he gets listed in the FP 100 Global Thinkers list. And his works are widely translated. And he’s done hundreds of interviews in popular media. Lots of people read Robin Hanson, too.
I’m not saying you should drop all current projects to learn this additional writing skill of being fun to read while also not pissing people off, I’m just saying that I think the lesson to be drawn from lots of smart people being annoyed by your tone is a bit deeper than “Just don’t use this article as an introduction to LW.”
The steps you could take to avoid the nobody-reads-it failure mode seem to me to be orthogonal to the steps you could take to avoid the author-is-a-colossal-prick failure mode. Given that you started this whole damn web site and community as insurance against the possibility that there might be someone out there with more innate talent for FAI, lukeprog’s suggestion that you take steps to mitigate the author-is-a-colossal-prick failure mode in furtherance of that mission seems like a pretty small ask to me. And I say this as one who has always enjoyed your writing.
I was thinking more that you could try your hand at a writing style that communicates the same stuff but doesn’t annoy so many people. E.g. Bostrom writes about the same topics but seems to annoy people less often.
The primary failure mode of writing is that nobody reads it. I don’t know how to write like Bostrom in a way that people will read. I’m already worried about things like the tiling agents paper dropping off the radar.
Lots of people read Bostrom. And he gets listed in the FP 100 Global Thinkers list. And his works are widely translated. And he’s done hundreds of interviews in popular media. Lots of people read Robin Hanson, too.
I’m not saying you should drop all current projects to learn this additional writing skill of being fun to read while also not pissing people off, I’m just saying that I think the lesson to be drawn from lots of smart people being annoyed by your tone is a bit deeper than “Just don’t use this article as an introduction to LW.”
I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to learn to do it either.
The steps you could take to avoid the nobody-reads-it failure mode seem to me to be orthogonal to the steps you could take to avoid the author-is-a-colossal-prick failure mode. Given that you started this whole damn web site and community as insurance against the possibility that there might be someone out there with more innate talent for FAI, lukeprog’s suggestion that you take steps to mitigate the author-is-a-colossal-prick failure mode in furtherance of that mission seems like a pretty small ask to me. And I say this as one who has always enjoyed your writing.
Do you know how to learn to do this?
I would miss his current writing style.