I’m the editor of Cato Unbound, and I’ve been a fan of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s for several years. I’m fairly sure that I introduced Gene to his work as well.
There is no real story behind the article. There almost never is, with me. It’s just my job to identify interesting and talented writers, and to pay them to write for us. He was overwhelmingly qualified. I asked, and he accepted.
Not really related, but your comment reminded me of a hilarious story about David Chalmers (of zombie fame). He tried to correct a mistake in the Wikipedia description of his views of consciousness, registering an account with his name and saying in the discussion section:
Marshall McLuhan here. Philos is right about each of the points above. The philosophy section would be much improved if it reverted to the “philosopher’s” edit of a few days ago.
Alas, the other editor had not watched Annie Hall:
How is he right about the points above? The points are clearly detailed and you could easily explain your criticism. Please could you also explain how cutting the historical, empirical descriptions of conscious experience and supervenience would improve the article. Why do you have the ID “DavidChalmers” yet use the name Marshall McLuhan? The only famous philosopher called Marshall McLuhan died in 1980. Are you taking the piss or are you philos with a duplicate ID?
The user with ID DavidChalmers who claims to be the deceased and famous Canadian philosopher Marshal McLuhan should note that using the name of a living, prominent person as a USERID is against Wikipedia guidelines.
Yeah—I had originally typed “‘Marshall McLuhan here’ moments” and then realized I was making an obscure reference to David Chalmers referencing Annie Hall, and thought a direct Annie Hall reference was better.
Every semester I teach the Cato Institute’s intern class about elementary forms of argument, logical fallacies, and the like. Something must have clicked for one of the interns, because she asked me what I thought of EY. She recommended some of his papers.
Well. He was totally unknown to me then, but I’ve since added Less Wrong to the sites that I recommend in the talk.
I’ve lurked extensively around here for quite a while, and what disagreements I have with the community consensus are so minor as not to need bothering about. (I’m a bit more of a fatalist about the matter of my own death, for example, in that I personally doubt that I will live a longer lifespan than a typical human has so far. But anyway.)
Keep up the good work, folks. Both my husband (SRStarin) and I always come away from Less Wrong with a lot of great stuff to think and talk about.
I’m the editor of Cato Unbound, and I’ve been a fan of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s for several years. I’m fairly sure that I introduced Gene to his work as well.
There is no real story behind the article. There almost never is, with me. It’s just my job to identify interesting and talented writers, and to pay them to write for us. He was overwhelmingly qualified. I asked, and he accepted.
One thing I love about Less Wrong is these Annie Hall Marshall McLuhan moments.
Not really related, but your comment reminded me of a hilarious story about David Chalmers (of zombie fame). He tried to correct a mistake in the Wikipedia description of his views of consciousness, registering an account with his name and saying in the discussion section:
Alas, the other editor had not watched Annie Hall:
The log is here.
Yeah—I had originally typed “‘Marshall McLuhan here’ moments” and then realized I was making an obscure reference to David Chalmers referencing Annie Hall, and thought a direct Annie Hall reference was better.
Thanks for responding! Do you remember how you found EY in the first place?
Every semester I teach the Cato Institute’s intern class about elementary forms of argument, logical fallacies, and the like. Something must have clicked for one of the interns, because she asked me what I thought of EY. She recommended some of his papers.
Well. He was totally unknown to me then, but I’ve since added Less Wrong to the sites that I recommend in the talk.
I’ve lurked extensively around here for quite a while, and what disagreements I have with the community consensus are so minor as not to need bothering about. (I’m a bit more of a fatalist about the matter of my own death, for example, in that I personally doubt that I will live a longer lifespan than a typical human has so far. But anyway.)
Keep up the good work, folks. Both my husband (SRStarin) and I always come away from Less Wrong with a lot of great stuff to think and talk about.