(The following remark will be useful only if you happen to have misunderstood TheAncientGeek in a particular way which you might not have.)
By “Jaynes’ super-smartness”, TAG means not “a notion of super-smartness promulgated by Jaynes” but “the idea that Jaynes was super-smart” (that idea being professed, e.g., by Eliezer). Chapman argues that Jaynes’s big idea was wrong-headed and that Jaynes failed to grasp its problems when they were pointed out to him, which suggests that he wasn’t super-smart.
Whether that’s contrarian around here, I’m not so sure. In so far as there’s an LW orthodoxy, I think it involves the idea that an ideal reasoner would be basically Bayesian in something like the manner described by Jaynes. I’m not so sure it involves the idea that Jaynes was super-smart, as such.
I was mostly, but not entirely, joking. In other words I think it is pretty common (although certainly not universal) for a very smart person to fail to grasp a real problem when people point it out, in part because his prior for being personally right and for someone who disagrees being wrong, is higher than it is for people in general.
Since it was a joke, I wasn’t commenting on the question (and don’t know) whether or not there was some real problem like that which Jaynes failed to notice.
(The following remark will be useful only if you happen to have misunderstood TheAncientGeek in a particular way which you might not have.)
By “Jaynes’ super-smartness”, TAG means not “a notion of super-smartness promulgated by Jaynes” but “the idea that Jaynes was super-smart” (that idea being professed, e.g., by Eliezer). Chapman argues that Jaynes’s big idea was wrong-headed and that Jaynes failed to grasp its problems when they were pointed out to him, which suggests that he wasn’t super-smart.
Whether that’s contrarian around here, I’m not so sure. In so far as there’s an LW orthodoxy, I think it involves the idea that an ideal reasoner would be basically Bayesian in something like the manner described by Jaynes. I’m not so sure it involves the idea that Jaynes was super-smart, as such.
I was mostly, but not entirely, joking. In other words I think it is pretty common (although certainly not universal) for a very smart person to fail to grasp a real problem when people point it out, in part because his prior for being personally right and for someone who disagrees being wrong, is higher than it is for people in general.
Since it was a joke, I wasn’t commenting on the question (and don’t know) whether or not there was some real problem like that which Jaynes failed to notice.