I think that if someone wrote a series of books about “how to play games,” and placed a lot of emphasis on the King’s Gambit in a way that implied that it was general advice for game theory rather than advice limited to a very restricted but rightly famous subset of games called chess, and this was the way the King’s Gambit had reached popular consciousness, then it would be OK to title a piece explaining the problem “Against the King’s Gambit”.
But the real reason I used that title here was that I thought that my preferred title (the one I used on my personal blog, “Financial investment is just a symbolic representation of investment projected onto a low-dimensional space inside a control system run by the US government”), would lead to a bunch of annoying and pointless arguments if I used it here on LessWrong, because I expected people to aggressively miss the point. So I replaced a clear description of what I’m arguing for it with a vague pointer to what I’m arguing against, since that seemed more defensible. I think that on the whole this was a good decision.
I’m not sure I understand your hypothetical scenario. Is our author’s message “no matter what you are doing, play the King’s Gambit” or “no matter what you are doing, do something analogous to the King’s Gambit”?
If the former, then I bet you are fighting a straw man. Does Taleb (or anyone) actually claim that we should ignore everything other than financial investment?
If the latter, then I don’t see how your argument actually engages. E.g., Taleb might claim that the things you say we should be doing instead of earning and investing actually fall into one or other of his categories of “as safe as you can manage” and “exposing you to lots of black-swan upside”.
My apologies, by the way, if I am (or seem to be) “aggressively missing the point”. For the avoidance of doubt, that’s not my intention.
Doesn’t seem like anyone’s aggressively missing the point this time, thanks for engaging :)
I’m not sure I understand your hypothetical scenario. Is our author’s message “no matter what you are doing, play the King’s Gambit” or “no matter what you are doing, do something analogous to the King’s Gambit”?
Praise of the king’s gambit as a chess opening, mixed with descriptions of generalized strategies for playing adversarial games, in ways that subtly but pervasively imply that it’s a central case of game-playing. This is likely to cause readers, on the margin, to notice games where something like the King’s Gambit is available and ignore the ones where it’s inapplicable.
I think it’s fairly common for people who agree with an argument but disagree with its conclusions to title that disagreement “Against X,” but I think it would be better to use something like “Taking X Further,” or “Beyond X,” or, for more hostility, “Taking X Seriously.”
I think that if someone wrote a series of books about “how to play games,” and placed a lot of emphasis on the King’s Gambit in a way that implied that it was general advice for game theory rather than advice limited to a very restricted but rightly famous subset of games called chess, and this was the way the King’s Gambit had reached popular consciousness, then it would be OK to title a piece explaining the problem “Against the King’s Gambit”.
But the real reason I used that title here was that I thought that my preferred title (the one I used on my personal blog, “Financial investment is just a symbolic representation of investment projected onto a low-dimensional space inside a control system run by the US government”), would lead to a bunch of annoying and pointless arguments if I used it here on LessWrong, because I expected people to aggressively miss the point. So I replaced a clear description of what I’m arguing for it with a vague pointer to what I’m arguing against, since that seemed more defensible. I think that on the whole this was a good decision.
I’m not sure I understand your hypothetical scenario. Is our author’s message “no matter what you are doing, play the King’s Gambit” or “no matter what you are doing, do something analogous to the King’s Gambit”?
If the former, then I bet you are fighting a straw man. Does Taleb (or anyone) actually claim that we should ignore everything other than financial investment?
If the latter, then I don’t see how your argument actually engages. E.g., Taleb might claim that the things you say we should be doing instead of earning and investing actually fall into one or other of his categories of “as safe as you can manage” and “exposing you to lots of black-swan upside”.
My apologies, by the way, if I am (or seem to be) “aggressively missing the point”. For the avoidance of doubt, that’s not my intention.
Doesn’t seem like anyone’s aggressively missing the point this time, thanks for engaging :)
Praise of the king’s gambit as a chess opening, mixed with descriptions of generalized strategies for playing adversarial games, in ways that subtly but pervasively imply that it’s a central case of game-playing. This is likely to cause readers, on the margin, to notice games where something like the King’s Gambit is available and ignore the ones where it’s inapplicable.
I think it’s fairly common for people who agree with an argument but disagree with its conclusions to title that disagreement “Against X,” but I think it would be better to use something like “Taking X Further,” or “Beyond X,” or, for more hostility, “Taking X Seriously.”