What are LessWrong’s thoughts on Venkatesh Rao, Gregory Rader, and Daniel Lemire?
Venkatesh Rao (who is amazing because he literally constantly challenges our definitions of everything):
http://www.quora.com/Venkatesh-Rao/Quora-Portfolio-Year-1
http://www.quora.com/Venkatesh-Rao
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/be-slightly-evil/
Gregory Rader:
http://www.quora.com/Gregory-Rader
Daniel Lemire:
http://www.quora.com/Daniel-Lemire and http://lemire.me/blog/ are also super-super-super interesting
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I tried doing google searches of site:lesswrong.com + their names (or websites), but ended up with little. I’d like to see what LessWrong thinks of Rao in particular. I have NEVER seen posts that were as amazingly insightful as his. It’s worth it just to sacrifice a day just to see all his amazing posts. The others were also amazing and really make you think about everything.
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E.g. with Rao, you have
My favorites:
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/05/19/intellectual-gluttony/
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/04/07/extroverts-introverts-aspies-and-codies
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2008/09/11/how-to-measure-information-work
http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-tips-for-advanced-writers/answer/Venkatesh-Rao
http://www.quora.com/Children/Why-do-some-humans-not-want-children/answer/Venkatesh-Rao
“Premature optimization is the root of all evil”—Knuth, computer science Never design a law with the worst case in mind—law/legislation
Rader:
http://onthespiral.com/stop-wasting-time-and-effort-developing-fragile-capabilities
http://onthespiral.com/unifying-value-universe
http://onthespiral.com/principles-disruptive-learning-environments
Lemire:
http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2010/08/16/working-long-hours-is-stupid
http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/archives/2007/11/19/directed-research-is-useless/
http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2011/06/08/is-wikipedia-anti-intellectual
http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/archives/2008/06/05/why-pure-theory-is-wasteful
http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2011/06/06/why-i-still-program
I don’t have the time or energy to read anywhere near this many links. Please replace the majority of the links with a summary of these people’s ideas, views, and/or ways of thinking.
Okay. The one thing is that these writers are so diverse that it’s hard to summarize them all in one post.
But basically, they’re all contrarians who question the very models that most people (including academics) follow. Basically, they’re all about taking risks, short incremental bursts of productivity, and economics based on non-financial principles of values. Are they right on everything? Who knows. But it’s refreshing to see what they say.
E.g. here’s one of Venkat’s good quotes (I can’t take too much) - from http://www.quora.com/What-careers-or-industries-are-the-most-meritocratic/answer/Venkatesh-Rao?srid=0WH :
http://onthespiral.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Value-Universe21.png (from http://onthespiral.com/unifying-value-universe) basically summarizes one of Greg Rader’s main points.
Summarizing quote:
And here is one of Lemire’s excellent points (http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/archives/2009/09/14/how-things-change-cheaters-are-innovators/):
Another one (http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/archives/2007/12/05/formal-definitions-are-less-useful-than-you-think/):
How ironic.
Venkatesh Rao is a fun writer, but I wouldn’t take his ideas very seriously. He tends to rely on broad associations, and tells “grand stories” using fuzzy categories, without a lot (or usually any) statistics to back up his rather broad and extraordinary claims. He also tends to name-drop famous philosophers, representing their ideas in ways one might generously call “heterodox”.
In other words, he seems like a well-read and verbally intelligent “narrative-builder” like Freud or Marx, and about as accurate.
I just discovered him via a link from Zed on this site. And I appreciate all the links and summary text to help me explore his output.
My initial take after about 10 hours of reading is that he’s a incredibly erudite verbal thinker who is awesome for (1) pointing to books that I may actually buy and read, (2) breaking me out of “one model thinking” on topics I didn’t even realize I was using only one model to think about. In this respect he strongly reminds me of Mencius Moldbug. However, also like Mencius, he seems to have a very political/social focus which fuels my suspicion that many of his top down “grand theories of how reality works” are false.
Estimating from the hip: there is a 12% chance that I’ll buy his book :-)
Oh yes, this is the aptest comparison on the page (a comparison to Robin Hanson would not be amiss either), except I get the feeling that Moldbug is more of a single big idea thinker than Rao (if you used Tetlock’s dichotomy, Moldbug is a very happy curled-up hedgehog, and Rao would be the fox, possibly a fox on Adderall).
Both are provocative thinkers who probably are only occasionally truly right. But that’s better than most writers, who are never right or provocative.
His book took me by surprise. I expected it to have the same style and sort of content as his blog (like every other blogger who writes a book) but it was completely different. It consists of half a dozen (unrelated) chapters that end with an exercise. I’m not sure if Tempo is any good (I suspect his solutions overfit the data) but it’s short (130 pages or so) so there’s no reason not to pick it up if you like the way Venkat thinks.
I’m taking the liberty of adjusting your estimate of wanting to buy the book upwards to 30%.
Tempo was a bit more in the style of the blog, but a good read.
I don’t think we should criticize[1] people on a public forum, on the internet where nothing ever gets deleted. For one, this is just not the kind of thread that is going to produce insightful ideas or a healthy discussion.
Second, it’s just too delicate a subject matter. I have my thoughts on the authors you list, but I keep deleting whatever I write. I just can’t find a way to discuss it in good taste. And really, how can I possibly give my critique on Venkat who came up with the brilliant “I was expecting an inquisition by a panel of Spocks” to refer to the judging nature of the LW populace!
[1] To judge; not necessarily to find fault.
Hm, well, I’m not asking LW to criticize them—I’m just inquiring about what LW thinks about their ideas (since LW is the only community whose input I would really consider). Right now, I’m pretty much an uncritical fanboy of them, but I’d still like to update my beliefs with some discussion (of course I’ll always respect them a lot)
That’s quite an extreme degree of self-censorship! Especially with respect to Rao, who’s practically a public figure: he’s written a book, runs a blog where people can comment on his ideas, and hosts a mailing list.
I think there’s a big difference between discussing a specific idea and discussing the person and everything he writes from Quora posts to the blog, the mailing list and the book. I’d happily voice my opinion about Tempo, or about Slightly Evil, the Gervais Principle or any of his other ideas. They’re different works though and they don’t deserve to be clumped together in one “what do I think about Rao” kind of post. When somebody is as prolific as Venkat inevitably some of the stuff is going to be good and some of the stuff is going to be not so good.
Maybe you can give a nuanced opinion about a person and his work in a couple of paragraphs. I sure can’t. It’s just incredibly difficult to do a person’s accomplishments justice with some kind of quick summary. If I don’t think I can stand behind what I write a couple of years down the road I shouldn’t write it in the first place.
Also, this is not self-censorship. We all have (controversial) opinions about a variety of topics and when we voice those opinions we send a signal. Some of these signals we don’t wish to send and consequently, on some matters we choose not to voice our opinion. It’s just a mundane cost-benefit analysis; nothing more.
I disagree. A decision being the result of a cost-benefit analysis doesn’t preclude it from being an act of self-censorship. (Otherwise it would follow that a perfect utility maximizer could never self-censor, which I see as a reductio.) As I see it, avoiding controversial opinions to prevent controversy or an off-putting signal is usually self-censorship, albeit self-censorship that’s often benign & helpful.
Agreed. But I see all of them as legitimate things to discuss.
Seems alright to me; nothing’s stopping a commenter from using this thread to give their opinions about individual works. Besides, people who’ve read one part of Rao’s work are likely to have read others, so it makes some sense to try soliciting their thoughts in one go.
That’s a high standard. A good standard, but a far higher one than is normal (both on Less Wrong and in general). People on LW post shorthand judgements of others’ work quite often (here’s a recent example) without being 100% rigorous about it but I don’t think it lowers LW’s level of discussion appreciably. Someone saying “I’m not a fan of this author, here are a couple of reasons why” or “I really liked this aspect of so-and-so’s work on such-and-such” can be very useful even if it’s not a careful, judicious balancing of a writer’s pros & cons.
[Edited to fix brackets.]
This post about a LW meetup that he attended is probably relevant.
I personally find Venkatesh’s blog very interesting, but am somewhat skeptical of a lot of his particular ideas. He has very cool posts about some historical things, like the importance of modern shipping containers, history of the corporation, and the importance of barbarians. Those are all seriously awesome, IMO.
I also found that his idea of legibility crystallized something I kind of knew before, but not particularly in words. Basically, you have some stuff that follows rules imposed on it (legible) and things that arose organically with lots of local adaptations, that is much harder to understand. Legibility is in the eye of the beholder, and learning thoughts or having particular ideas can make some things legible that weren’t before. If you optimize too hard for one particular thing, you get something that’s legible but largely useless, if you don’t try to impose order its difficult to manipulate.
I’d take issue with the phrase “his idea of legibility”. What Rao is doing in that post is summarizing Scott’s excellent book on that same topic; it is of course a valuable service to intelligently summarize a book, but it’s hardly the same as coming up with the idea in the first place. (I was turned on to that book by a guy named Michael Bolton, who I think is a pretty extraordinary thinker in his own right. Rather than write a post about Scott’s book he’s only been going around ordering everyone he knew to read the book.)
True.
So yeah, not his idea. He uses it a lot but didn’t originate it.
The linked post has prominent first-graf credit to Scott’s book.
Yup. Which would make “Scott’s idea of legibility” more accurate than “his (Rao’s) idea of legibility”.
Yeah, I missed something subtle: atucker, not VR, was claiming too much credit for VR, probably because you went on to contrast Bolton against VR.
We should expect narrative thinkers to riff on each others’ themes.
Some would say that legibility is James Scott’s idea.
Oh cool—thanks for the reply and examples!
Which of his ideas are you skeptical about?
I just want to note that the experience of being a resident blogger there was very fun, and it helped me crystallize a lot of ideas—plus his editing and writing advice was VERY helpful. It also led me to think about Goodhart’s law, discuss it extensively with Scott Garrabrant and Abram Dempski, and blog about it - and that led in various ways to my recent MIRI paper with Scott.
My posts there: http://ribbonfarm.com/author/david/
So if anyone is looking for a good way to express ideas that are adjacent to, but not exclusively for the rational blogosphere, and/or wants more editing and exposure for their blogging—and already has interesting ideas worth writing about under the broad umbrella of what he’d host—I would say it’s worth seeing if you can get into one of his writing workshops / blogpost generating projects—he encourages people to submit a pitch for a piece: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/pitches-and-prompts/
The lack of posts is pretty much my own opinion too.
Some of Rao’s writing seemed interesting from a “making social games explicit” standpoint, which we’ve talked about on here once or twice.