I’m having some slight difficulty putting perceptions into words—just as I can’t describe in full detail everything I do to craft my fictions—but I can certainly tell the difference between that and this.
Since I haven’t spent a lot of time here talking about ideas along the lines of Pirsig’s Quality, there are readers who will think this is a copout. And if I wanted to be manipulative, I would go ahead and offer up a decoy reason they can verbally acknowledge in order to justify their intuitive perceptions of difference—something along the lines of “Demanding that a specific person justify specific decisions in a top-level post doesn’t encourage the spreading threads of casual conversation about rationality” or “In the end, every OBLW post was about rationality even if it didn’t look that way at the time, just as much as the Quantum Physics Sequence amazingly ended up being about rationality after all.” Heck, if I was a less practiced rationalist, I would be inventing verbal excuses like that to justify my intuitive perceptions to myself. As it is, though, I’ll just say that I can see the difference perceptually, and leave it at that—after adding some unnecessary ornaments to prevent this reply from being voted down by people who are still too focused on the verbal.
You could have just not replied at all. It would have saved me the time spent trying to write up a response to a reply which is nearly devoid of any content.
Incidentally, I don’t have “intuitive” perceptions of difference here. It’s pretty clear to me, and I can explain why. Though in my estimation, you don’t care.
Incidentally, I don’t have “intuitive” perceptions of difference here. It’s pretty clear to me, and I can explain why. Though in my estimation, you don’t care.
When I read Eliezer’s fiction the concepts from dozens of lesswrong posts float to the surface of my mind, are processed and the implications become more intuitively grasped. Your brain may be wired somewhat differently but for me fiction is useful.
PPS: Probing my intuitions further, I suspect that if the above post had been questioning e.g. komponisto’s rationality in the same tone and manner, I would have had around the same reaction of offtopicness for around the same reason.
I’m having some slight difficulty putting perceptions into words—just as I can’t describe in full detail everything I do to craft my fictions—but I can certainly tell the difference between that and this.
Since I haven’t spent a lot of time here talking about ideas along the lines of Pirsig’s Quality, there are readers who will think this is a copout. And if I wanted to be manipulative, I would go ahead and offer up a decoy reason they can verbally acknowledge in order to justify their intuitive perceptions of difference—something along the lines of “Demanding that a specific person justify specific decisions in a top-level post doesn’t encourage the spreading threads of casual conversation about rationality” or “In the end, every OBLW post was about rationality even if it didn’t look that way at the time, just as much as the Quantum Physics Sequence amazingly ended up being about rationality after all.” Heck, if I was a less practiced rationalist, I would be inventing verbal excuses like that to justify my intuitive perceptions to myself. As it is, though, I’ll just say that I can see the difference perceptually, and leave it at that—after adding some unnecessary ornaments to prevent this reply from being voted down by people who are still too focused on the verbal.
PS: We post classified ads for FHI, too.
You could have just not replied at all. It would have saved me the time spent trying to write up a response to a reply which is nearly devoid of any content.
Incidentally, I don’t have “intuitive” perceptions of difference here. It’s pretty clear to me, and I can explain why. Though in my estimation, you don’t care.
When I read Eliezer’s fiction the concepts from dozens of lesswrong posts float to the surface of my mind, are processed and the implications become more intuitively grasped. Your brain may be wired somewhat differently but for me fiction is useful.
PPS: Probing my intuitions further, I suspect that if the above post had been questioning e.g. komponisto’s rationality in the same tone and manner, I would have had around the same reaction of offtopicness for around the same reason.