What lapse? People don’t know these things until I explain them! Have you been in a mental state of having-already-read-LW for so long that you’ve forgotten that no one from outside would be expected to spontaneously describe in Bayesian terms the problem with saying that “complexity” explains something? Someone who’d already invented from scratch everything I had to teach wouldn’t be taken as an apprentice, they’d already be me! And if they were 17 at the time then I’d probably be working for them in a few years!
What lapse? People don’t know these things until I explain them!
A little over-the-top there. People can see the problem with proposing “complexity” as a problem-solving approach without having read your work. I hadn’t yet read your work on Bayescraft when I saw that article, and I still cringed as I read Marcello’s response—I even remember previous encounters where people had proposed “solutions” like that, though I’d perhaps explain the error differently.
It is a lapse to regard “complexity” as a problem-solving approach, even if you are unfamiliar with Bayescraft, and yes, even if you are unfamiliar with the Chuck Norris of thinking.
Have you been in a mental state of having-already-read-LW for so long that you’ve forgotten that no one from outside would be expected to spontaneously describe in Bayesian terms the problem with saying that “complexity” explains something?
Seriously? What sort of outside-LW people do you talk to? I’m a PhD student in a fairly mediocre maths department, and I’m pretty sure everyone in the room I’m in right now would call me out on it if I tried to use the word “complexity” in the context Marcelo did there as if it actually meant something, and for essentially the right reason. This might be a consequence of us being mathematicians, and so used to thinking in formalism, but there are an awful lot of professional mathematicians out there who haven’t read anything written by Eliezer Yudkowsky.
I’m sorry but “there’s got to be some amount of complexity that does it.” is just obviously meaningless. I could have told you this long before I read the sequences, and definitely when I was 17. I think you massively underestimate the rationality of humanity.
What lapse? People don’t know these things until I explain them! Have you been in a mental state of having-already-read-LW for so long that you’ve forgotten that no one from outside would be expected to spontaneously describe in Bayesian terms the problem with saying that “complexity” explains something? Someone who’d already invented from scratch everything I had to teach wouldn’t be taken as an apprentice, they’d already be me! And if they were 17 at the time then I’d probably be working for them in a few years!
A little over-the-top there. People can see the problem with proposing “complexity” as a problem-solving approach without having read your work. I hadn’t yet read your work on Bayescraft when I saw that article, and I still cringed as I read Marcello’s response—I even remember previous encounters where people had proposed “solutions” like that, though I’d perhaps explain the error differently.
It is a lapse to regard “complexity” as a problem-solving approach, even if you are unfamiliar with Bayescraft, and yes, even if you are unfamiliar with the Chuck Norris of thinking.
Seriously? What sort of outside-LW people do you talk to? I’m a PhD student in a fairly mediocre maths department, and I’m pretty sure everyone in the room I’m in right now would call me out on it if I tried to use the word “complexity” in the context Marcelo did there as if it actually meant something, and for essentially the right reason. This might be a consequence of us being mathematicians, and so used to thinking in formalism, but there are an awful lot of professional mathematicians out there who haven’t read anything written by Eliezer Yudkowsky.
I’m sorry but “there’s got to be some amount of complexity that does it.” is just obviously meaningless. I could have told you this long before I read the sequences, and definitely when I was 17. I think you massively underestimate the rationality of humanity.
Scarequotes added. :-)