This post comes across as a direct opposite of your usual interesting, clear and insightful entries. It feels to me as if it was written by a novice to this site who is also bad at writing. Normally I’d simply downvote and move on, but you are neither new, nor a poor writer, so I am hoping that somewhere inside this post there is a worthwhile point. However, it failed to materialize in the comments I checked, hence my suggestion to rewrite (and maybe run by someone in your local LW crowd, before posting again—I hear you know a lot of high-profile regulars who would be happy to oblige).
I am glad that I didn’t realize that people could still reply to the post after I deleted it, since its nice receiving the last responses quite a bit later after I am no longer triggered by the initial general response.
I think the reason that my writing is coming off to you this way is that I have moved into a very different mental space than the Less Wrong community, and forgot the degree to which I needed to tune my thinking/writing for Less Wrongers to understand/appreciate my messages.
Less Wrongers are used to talking to people who think and speak in the way that people think and speak on this site. I don’t read Less Wrong personally, only post to it. I’ve read some of the sequences, and I have spent years speaking in person on a regular basis with many high profile Less Wrongers, but the way in which people read and write on the blog is kind of like a foreign language to me, which I am currently rusty at.
Likewise with the cultural expectations about what I should be delivering and how.
I’m considering attempting a rewrite, but not sure if I want to or not. What would my incentive be to do so? So far I have received contempt and criticism for my attempt to communicate what I consider to be some very useful principles. Why should I keep trying?
In order to get it right, I need to wrap my head around the Less Wrong way of thinking again, and figure out how to translate everything I’m saying into something that people on this site will understand. That is quite a lot of work. I really hate this culture of tearing things apart when you don’t understand rather than asking questions and being curious about what signal the author is attempting to send. I’m genuinely not sure if I want to engage it again or not.
Its a large time and energy investment to word a post in a way that does not get shredded in this environment
I don’t tend to receive much in the way of positive feedback or appreciation for doing it
I will almost certainly receive a lot in the way of negative feedback regardless—potentially quite a lot
Pros
I might be able to share something with someone else that creates value for them
Having a reasonable reputation in the community could be good for my business
I might receive some positive reinforcement
I ended up deciding to do a rewrite of one of the fundamental underlying principles of this post into a new post, which is almost done. It has been something that has been many hours of work. A lot more work than I had anticipated to get the post up to snuff where I think it is less likely to get shot down than this original post.
The amount of work it took to get to a point where it might be acceptable to LWers is unlikely to be balanced by the pros, so I am leaning toward it being my last post, although I am very open to having my utility function show me otherwise.
This post comes across as a direct opposite of your usual interesting, clear and insightful entries.
Multiply by −1? While reversed stupidity may not be intelligence, the opposite (in the sense of antithetical) sure is.
Now, all that is left is to figure out how to multiply an English sentence by −1. The neutral element would be the empty string, I suppose. Or some tangentially related but really inconsequential comment, like this one. That’s nice, introducing some reflectivity.
Hmmm … maybe reverse the polarity? This is harder than I thought. If we’re defining this operation cleanly, we can always reward ourselves with a Kleene star. Seems arbitrary enough, no?
It’s just math and parsing theory jokes riffing on an intentional misinterpretation of “a direct opposite of interesting”, nothing that relates to the substance of the discussion as far as I can see.
(Well, it might be meta-level commentary on the substance. Anything might be a meta-level commentary. Constant vigilance.)
Thank you. I just now posted the summary (at −12). Rewriting the post from scratch sounds like a good idea. Is that done frequently on this blog?
This post comes across as a direct opposite of your usual interesting, clear and insightful entries. It feels to me as if it was written by a novice to this site who is also bad at writing. Normally I’d simply downvote and move on, but you are neither new, nor a poor writer, so I am hoping that somewhere inside this post there is a worthwhile point. However, it failed to materialize in the comments I checked, hence my suggestion to rewrite (and maybe run by someone in your local LW crowd, before posting again—I hear you know a lot of high-profile regulars who would be happy to oblige).
I am glad that I didn’t realize that people could still reply to the post after I deleted it, since its nice receiving the last responses quite a bit later after I am no longer triggered by the initial general response.
I think the reason that my writing is coming off to you this way is that I have moved into a very different mental space than the Less Wrong community, and forgot the degree to which I needed to tune my thinking/writing for Less Wrongers to understand/appreciate my messages.
Less Wrongers are used to talking to people who think and speak in the way that people think and speak on this site. I don’t read Less Wrong personally, only post to it. I’ve read some of the sequences, and I have spent years speaking in person on a regular basis with many high profile Less Wrongers, but the way in which people read and write on the blog is kind of like a foreign language to me, which I am currently rusty at.
Likewise with the cultural expectations about what I should be delivering and how.
I’m considering attempting a rewrite, but not sure if I want to or not. What would my incentive be to do so? So far I have received contempt and criticism for my attempt to communicate what I consider to be some very useful principles. Why should I keep trying?
In order to get it right, I need to wrap my head around the Less Wrong way of thinking again, and figure out how to translate everything I’m saying into something that people on this site will understand. That is quite a lot of work. I really hate this culture of tearing things apart when you don’t understand rather than asking questions and being curious about what signal the author is attempting to send. I’m genuinely not sure if I want to engage it again or not.
What do you consider the pros and cons?
Cons
Its a large time and energy investment to word a post in a way that does not get shredded in this environment
I don’t tend to receive much in the way of positive feedback or appreciation for doing it
I will almost certainly receive a lot in the way of negative feedback regardless—potentially quite a lot
Pros
I might be able to share something with someone else that creates value for them
Having a reasonable reputation in the community could be good for my business
I might receive some positive reinforcement
I ended up deciding to do a rewrite of one of the fundamental underlying principles of this post into a new post, which is almost done. It has been something that has been many hours of work. A lot more work than I had anticipated to get the post up to snuff where I think it is less likely to get shot down than this original post.
The amount of work it took to get to a point where it might be acceptable to LWers is unlikely to be balanced by the pros, so I am leaning toward it being my last post, although I am very open to having my utility function show me otherwise.
Multiply by −1? While reversed stupidity may not be intelligence, the opposite (in the sense of antithetical) sure is.
Now, all that is left is to figure out how to multiply an English sentence by −1. The neutral element would be the empty string, I suppose. Or some tangentially related but really inconsequential comment, like this one. That’s nice, introducing some reflectivity.
Hmmm … maybe reverse the polarity? This is harder than I thought. If we’re defining this operation cleanly, we can always reward ourselves with a Kleene star. Seems arbitrary enough, no?
Can you use different words to describe what you are trying to say here? I don’t understand but would like to.
It’s just math and parsing theory jokes riffing on an intentional misinterpretation of “a direct opposite of interesting”, nothing that relates to the substance of the discussion as far as I can see.
(Well, it might be meta-level commentary on the substance. Anything might be a meta-level commentary. Constant vigilance.)
Thanks.