I voted it up because I feel that especially for beginners negative feedback should basically be no worse than −1, and also because I’m an Eva fan.
From the title, I had expected to read about cognitive prostheses, the extended mind hypothesis, wireheading, Dewey’s “Learning What to Value” AIXI variant, etc.
And what did I get… That said, why is this a bad article? Because it seems to consist entirely of half-baked rhetorical questions, odd examples and language, and no hard grounding of any kind or even a clear thesis. Basically, it reads like the stereotypical freshman college student bull session.
The main problem is that the article is all over the place. Next time, try to pick a single coherent thing that you want to say, and just say that, in as few of words as possible, with as much evidence (in the form of links to either LW, or outside sources, preferably scientific) You present far too many questions in the introduction, each of which are far too vague to actually be answered or discussed in a coherent way.
The pictures add nothing. I can think of no other LW post that uses pictures like this (though I could be wrong) There are also typos, and misunderstandings of some concepts.
I would suggest reading a little bit more of the site, specifically some of the hardcore articles about decision theory, etc. Then you will have a better idea about how to write a good post. I hope that was helpful!
Why the bad ratings? I’m still kind of a beginner, so advice is very welcome.
I voted it up because I feel that especially for beginners negative feedback should basically be no worse than −1, and also because I’m an Eva fan.
From the title, I had expected to read about cognitive prostheses, the extended mind hypothesis, wireheading, Dewey’s “Learning What to Value” AIXI variant, etc.
And what did I get… That said, why is this a bad article? Because it seems to consist entirely of half-baked rhetorical questions, odd examples and language, and no hard grounding of any kind or even a clear thesis. Basically, it reads like the stereotypical freshman college student bull session.
Just a few quick points, to help:
The main problem is that the article is all over the place. Next time, try to pick a single coherent thing that you want to say, and just say that, in as few of words as possible, with as much evidence (in the form of links to either LW, or outside sources, preferably scientific) You present far too many questions in the introduction, each of which are far too vague to actually be answered or discussed in a coherent way.
The pictures add nothing. I can think of no other LW post that uses pictures like this (though I could be wrong) There are also typos, and misunderstandings of some concepts.
I would suggest reading a little bit more of the site, specifically some of the hardcore articles about decision theory, etc. Then you will have a better idea about how to write a good post. I hope that was helpful!