OK, I guess people want a more substantive reply, so here goes. Sorry for the initial post, which must have came off as insulting, but I sincerely believed that this was a troll.
A few days ago, I described a post as “almost the epitome of what I don’t want to see on LessWrong.” This post, on the other hand, is the epitome of what I don’t want to see on LessWrong.
It makes weird and unproven claims (“very reliably gives people deep experiences,” NLP, etc.), generally takes itself way too seriously (“stricter set of formal rules than almost anything of its length ever published,” “Seven Secular Sermons”), and exists entirely to plug something that I think is generally poor quality.
I did not have a “deep experience” on viewing this video. I had much the reverse—I cringed and closed the window before watching the entire thing, because I considered it generally creepy and in poor taste.
I don’t want content like this associated with LessWrong. I think it is completely embarrassing, and I say this as someone who plans on attending Solstice events. Your username doesn’t help either, though I know that certainly one’s username does not necessarily reflect their true personality, etc. etc.
But my least favorite part of this post is the fact that, on seeing it, I knew it was going to be upvoted significantly, simply because it was on the “right side.” And that’s a really bad omen for LessWrong as a whole. There shouldn’t be sides or positions that LessWrong favors thanks to external factors—there really shouldn’t!
That is why I thought your post was a joke—I thought you were trying to make fun of the LW community’s support of certain kinds of content without any real eye for merit. I apologize for that presumption and any insult it or the above remarks may have caused, but I consider this an important issue for LessWrong as a whole—too important for me to mince my words.
I’m not surprised that after having a negative reaction before you even clicked the video, you did not have a deep experience. Maybe I should have substantiated my claims, as I now did in my reply to drethelin.
You are right that I do take this quite seriously, for two reasons that will only make sense for someone willing to take poetry seriously at all. First, this project is about raising the sanity waterline by replacing religion. All big religions have didactic poetry, so it might be an important component that any post-religion should feature! The last time atheism got something like this was Lucretius’ De rerum natura, which is 2000 years old, doesn’t rhyme and still had an impact that is hard to overstate. Second, nobody has done strict meter double rhymes for more than a few stanzas because it is really hard. (Please give counterexamples if you can. The ones people have named so far—John Donne, GK Chesterton, David Rakoff—all used laxer rules or wrote much shorter pieces) This kind of writing is essentially a prolonged search among hundreds of possible formulations of each stanza to find one that doesn’t violate any of the rules. This was a lot of work, and this is what makes it unique.
I don’t expect you to take this seriously, I’m merely explaining why I do. This is essentially an art project, and art isn’t what LW is about or should be about. But this is the bragging thread, where achievements that LW isn’t about may be celebrated, so that’s what I do.
I had a good experience, but not an astonishingly deep one.
Who knows whether it obeys a stricter set of formal rules than almost anything of its length ever published in the English language? That’s a vague claim (it’s hard to judge how strict rules are) and impossible to check.
OK, I guess people want a more substantive reply, so here goes. Sorry for the initial post, which must have came off as insulting, but I sincerely believed that this was a troll.
A few days ago, I described a post as “almost the epitome of what I don’t want to see on LessWrong.” This post, on the other hand, is the epitome of what I don’t want to see on LessWrong.
It makes weird and unproven claims (“very reliably gives people deep experiences,” NLP, etc.), generally takes itself way too seriously (“stricter set of formal rules than almost anything of its length ever published,” “Seven Secular Sermons”), and exists entirely to plug something that I think is generally poor quality.
I did not have a “deep experience” on viewing this video. I had much the reverse—I cringed and closed the window before watching the entire thing, because I considered it generally creepy and in poor taste.
I don’t want content like this associated with LessWrong. I think it is completely embarrassing, and I say this as someone who plans on attending Solstice events. Your username doesn’t help either, though I know that certainly one’s username does not necessarily reflect their true personality, etc. etc.
But my least favorite part of this post is the fact that, on seeing it, I knew it was going to be upvoted significantly, simply because it was on the “right side.” And that’s a really bad omen for LessWrong as a whole. There shouldn’t be sides or positions that LessWrong favors thanks to external factors—there really shouldn’t!
That is why I thought your post was a joke—I thought you were trying to make fun of the LW community’s support of certain kinds of content without any real eye for merit. I apologize for that presumption and any insult it or the above remarks may have caused, but I consider this an important issue for LessWrong as a whole—too important for me to mince my words.
Thanks for not mincing your words!
I’m not surprised that after having a negative reaction before you even clicked the video, you did not have a deep experience. Maybe I should have substantiated my claims, as I now did in my reply to drethelin.
You are right that I do take this quite seriously, for two reasons that will only make sense for someone willing to take poetry seriously at all. First, this project is about raising the sanity waterline by replacing religion. All big religions have didactic poetry, so it might be an important component that any post-religion should feature! The last time atheism got something like this was Lucretius’ De rerum natura, which is 2000 years old, doesn’t rhyme and still had an impact that is hard to overstate. Second, nobody has done strict meter double rhymes for more than a few stanzas because it is really hard. (Please give counterexamples if you can. The ones people have named so far—John Donne, GK Chesterton, David Rakoff—all used laxer rules or wrote much shorter pieces) This kind of writing is essentially a prolonged search among hundreds of possible formulations of each stanza to find one that doesn’t violate any of the rules. This was a lot of work, and this is what makes it unique.
I don’t expect you to take this seriously, I’m merely explaining why I do. This is essentially an art project, and art isn’t what LW is about or should be about. But this is the bragging thread, where achievements that LW isn’t about may be celebrated, so that’s what I do.
Fair points, I’ve upvoted this comment.
Upvoted because this is the bragging thread.
I had a good experience, but not an astonishingly deep one.
Who knows whether it obeys a stricter set of formal rules than almost anything of its length ever published in the English language? That’s a vague claim (it’s hard to judge how strict rules are) and impossible to check.