That is not standard practice when the point I’m citing the work for is in the abstract of the paper. Moreover, it’s just not true that it’s always standard practice to cite the page number of the specific work. I can point you to thousands of examples. That said, for books it is indeed helpful to cite page numbers.
Separate issues going on here: yes, it is common not to cite the specific page number, perhaps because one’s referring to the work “as a whole”. But my criticism of your paper having a vibe of bib-padding was not because of you saying “Yudkowsky (2010)” here, or any particular time in your excerpt, but rather, because taken as a whole, the excerpt looks that way. For example, there is much more citation than explanation of what the cited works are specifically there to substantiate.
Certainly, doing that a few times is fine, but here it looks more like what would result from someone trying to game the “bibliography length metric”.
Independently of that, your comment on this thread was supposedly to help someone find where a paper makes a claim that others didn’t remember the paper making. Regardless of the standards for academic papers, it is general etiquette that would suggest you give the page number in such a reply. And that shouldn’t be hard if you know the paper well enough to be using it for that claim.
So while “Yudkowsky (2010)” might be fine for the paper, when someone questions whether it makes a specific claim, you should do a little more than just give the naked citation a second time within the same thread—then you should give the page number.
I just disagree with all of this. The “explanation” stuff comes later; this is just the intro. If you read major works in Anglophone philosophy, you’ll see that what I have here is very much the same style. You can even compare to, for example, the extended abstract submitted by Salamon & Bostrom for an edited volume on the technological singularity.
And no, you don’t usually give the page number when the claims you’re saying a cited work covers are in the abstract of the paper. The hope is that someone will bother to at least read the abstract of the cited paper before bothering the original author with questions about “Which page number is that on?”
I would ask you to reconsider. As SilasBarta says, “Yudkowsky (2010)” is fine in the paper, but you used it in the comments here in response to someone’s question in this forum.
And no, you don’t usually give the page number when the claims you’re saying a cited work covers are in the abstract of the paper. The hope is that someone will bother to at least read the abstract of the cited paper before bothering the original author with questions about “Which page number is that on?”
“Um… page one?”
You seem to assume that the only way someone could have asked that question is if they hadn’t read even the abstract. But it is easy for me to imagine someone who read the whole paper, or some significant fraction, and just have missed or forgotten the claim that you attribute to Yudkowsky . In which case, saying “It’s on page one” would be helpful.
In fact, having read that significant fraction, I would be moderately surprised to hear Yudkowsky characterize TDT as an extension of CDT. He gave me the strong impression of offering an alternative to CDT, one which gets right answers where CDT is wrong. To me, calling TDT “an extension of CDT” implies that it applies to a wider range of problems than CDT, while agreeing with CDT where CDT gives a well-defined answer.
To me, calling TDT “an extension of CDT” implies that it applies to a wider range of problems than CDT, while agreeing with CDT where CDT gives a well-defined answer.
But this is a correct characterization of what TDT does. It extends applicability of CDT from action-determined to decision-determined problems.
Again, separate issues here that I think you’re blurring (of I’m just being unclear): I’m not criticizing you for lacking page numbers in the paper excerpt, but for piling on whole-work citations without clarifying what specific insight it adds. I will have to retract that in light of viewing this as an introduction, since you say your paper will cover that later.
WRT page numbers, my criticism was that when someone says, “hey, that claim about [citation of X which I have already read] doesn’t sound right”, then you should give a more helpful answer than “oh, that’s in [citation of X]”—you should point to a more specific passage.
And yes, it would have indeed been helpful if you had said “see the abstract”, because that would have told the questioner (and the onlooker, me, who was wondering the same thing) what you are basing that claim on. In this matter, for the reasons Vladimir gave, TDT isn’t best regarded as an extension of CDT. So a reply that you just got it from the abstract would show that (as turned out to be the case) your claim was based on a summary rather than on a specific analysis of the mechanics of TDT and its relationship to other decision theories.
Edit: I apologize for any abrasiveness in my comments here. I sensed a kind of stubbornness and condescension in your replies and overreacted to that.
WRT page numbers, my criticism was that when someone says, “hey, that claim about [citation of X which I have already read] doesn’t sound right”, then you should give a more helpful answer than “oh, that’s in [citation of X]”—you should point to a more specific passage.
Luke quoted the source and gave a link to it in digital form. If you want to find the context, open it up in Acrobat and copy the quote into the search bar.
It wasn’t in quote form, and like I just said, it matters which instance of the “TDT = extension of CDT” claim lukeprog had in mind. As it turns out, he was relying on a qualification-free summary, rather than the meat of the paper. If he had said so the first time Vladimir asked about it (rather than repeat the exact citation he already gave, and which the questioner had already read and already had the URL for), then he could have saved himself, me, and Vladimir the time it took to unravel this oversimplification (as it turned out to be).
“Find the passage that helps me the most” just isn’t good enough.
Luke’s comment has two paragraphs in quotes, and a link to Eliezer’s TDT paper. If you follow the link, you can copy either of the quoted paragraphs into Acrobats search bar, and it will show where in the document that paragraph appears.
Your first request for clarification that led to this comment was justified. But that should have satisfied your desire for a citation.
That wasn’t until ~3 rounds of back-and-forth! And I didn’t ask further after that; I just said why the previous answers weren’t as helpful. And while the desire for a citation may have been satisfied, the entire point was to reveal the level of understanding which led to his claim about the TDT paper, and that issue was not satisfied by lukeprog’s responses. His exchange with Vladimir, however, did show my concerns to be justified.
Again, if he had just simply said from the beginning, “Oh, I was just copying what the abstract said”, it would have saved everyone a lot of time. But instead, he decided to unhelpfully repeat a citation everyone already knew about, thus hiding his level of understanding for a few more rounds.
You asked for clarification once, and Luke gave a satisfactory response. How do you get “~3 rounds” from that?
I just said why the previous answers weren’t as helpful.
There was no reason for you to do that, you got an answer that addressed those concerns.
And while the desire for a citation may have been satisfied, the entire point was to reveal the level of understanding which led to his claim about the TDT paper, and that issue was not satisfied by lukeprog’s responses.
Notice how Nesov, by focusing back on the object level after the issue of communicating citations was resolved, was able to deal with in this comment.
Re: your edit.
That is not standard practice when the point I’m citing the work for is in the abstract of the paper. Moreover, it’s just not true that it’s always standard practice to cite the page number of the specific work. I can point you to thousands of examples. That said, for books it is indeed helpful to cite page numbers.
Separate issues going on here: yes, it is common not to cite the specific page number, perhaps because one’s referring to the work “as a whole”. But my criticism of your paper having a vibe of bib-padding was not because of you saying “Yudkowsky (2010)” here, or any particular time in your excerpt, but rather, because taken as a whole, the excerpt looks that way. For example, there is much more citation than explanation of what the cited works are specifically there to substantiate.
Certainly, doing that a few times is fine, but here it looks more like what would result from someone trying to game the “bibliography length metric”.
Independently of that, your comment on this thread was supposedly to help someone find where a paper makes a claim that others didn’t remember the paper making. Regardless of the standards for academic papers, it is general etiquette that would suggest you give the page number in such a reply. And that shouldn’t be hard if you know the paper well enough to be using it for that claim.
So while “Yudkowsky (2010)” might be fine for the paper, when someone questions whether it makes a specific claim, you should do a little more than just give the naked citation a second time within the same thread—then you should give the page number.
I just disagree with all of this. The “explanation” stuff comes later; this is just the intro. If you read major works in Anglophone philosophy, you’ll see that what I have here is very much the same style. You can even compare to, for example, the extended abstract submitted by Salamon & Bostrom for an edited volume on the technological singularity.
And no, you don’t usually give the page number when the claims you’re saying a cited work covers are in the abstract of the paper. The hope is that someone will bother to at least read the abstract of the cited paper before bothering the original author with questions about “Which page number is that on?”
“Um… page one?”
I would ask you to reconsider. As SilasBarta says, “Yudkowsky (2010)” is fine in the paper, but you used it in the comments here in response to someone’s question in this forum.
You seem to assume that the only way someone could have asked that question is if they hadn’t read even the abstract. But it is easy for me to imagine someone who read the whole paper, or some significant fraction, and just have missed or forgotten the claim that you attribute to Yudkowsky . In which case, saying “It’s on page one” would be helpful.
In fact, having read that significant fraction, I would be moderately surprised to hear Yudkowsky characterize TDT as an extension of CDT. He gave me the strong impression of offering an alternative to CDT, one which gets right answers where CDT is wrong. To me, calling TDT “an extension of CDT” implies that it applies to a wider range of problems than CDT, while agreeing with CDT where CDT gives a well-defined answer.
But this is a correct characterization of what TDT does. It extends applicability of CDT from action-determined to decision-determined problems.
But CDT already gives well-defined answers to decision-determined problems such as Newcomb’s problem. They’re just not necessarily the right answers.
By “applies”, I mean “yields an output, which supporters claim is correct”, not “yields a correct output”.
Again, separate issues here that I think you’re blurring (of I’m just being unclear): I’m not criticizing you for lacking page numbers in the paper excerpt, but for piling on whole-work citations without clarifying what specific insight it adds. I will have to retract that in light of viewing this as an introduction, since you say your paper will cover that later.
WRT page numbers, my criticism was that when someone says, “hey, that claim about [citation of X which I have already read] doesn’t sound right”, then you should give a more helpful answer than “oh, that’s in [citation of X]”—you should point to a more specific passage.
And yes, it would have indeed been helpful if you had said “see the abstract”, because that would have told the questioner (and the onlooker, me, who was wondering the same thing) what you are basing that claim on. In this matter, for the reasons Vladimir gave, TDT isn’t best regarded as an extension of CDT. So a reply that you just got it from the abstract would show that (as turned out to be the case) your claim was based on a summary rather than on a specific analysis of the mechanics of TDT and its relationship to other decision theories.
Edit: I apologize for any abrasiveness in my comments here. I sensed a kind of stubbornness and condescension in your replies and overreacted to that.
Luke quoted the source and gave a link to it in digital form. If you want to find the context, open it up in Acrobat and copy the quote into the search bar.
It wasn’t in quote form, and like I just said, it matters which instance of the “TDT = extension of CDT” claim lukeprog had in mind. As it turns out, he was relying on a qualification-free summary, rather than the meat of the paper. If he had said so the first time Vladimir asked about it (rather than repeat the exact citation he already gave, and which the questioner had already read and already had the URL for), then he could have saved himself, me, and Vladimir the time it took to unravel this oversimplification (as it turned out to be).
“Find the passage that helps me the most” just isn’t good enough.
Luke’s comment has two paragraphs in quotes, and a link to Eliezer’s TDT paper. If you follow the link, you can copy either of the quoted paragraphs into Acrobats search bar, and it will show where in the document that paragraph appears.
Your first request for clarification that led to this comment was justified. But that should have satisfied your desire for a citation.
That wasn’t until ~3 rounds of back-and-forth! And I didn’t ask further after that; I just said why the previous answers weren’t as helpful. And while the desire for a citation may have been satisfied, the entire point was to reveal the level of understanding which led to his claim about the TDT paper, and that issue was not satisfied by lukeprog’s responses. His exchange with Vladimir, however, did show my concerns to be justified.
Again, if he had just simply said from the beginning, “Oh, I was just copying what the abstract said”, it would have saved everyone a lot of time. But instead, he decided to unhelpfully repeat a citation everyone already knew about, thus hiding his level of understanding for a few more rounds.
I don’t know why you’d want to defend that.
You asked for clarification once, and Luke gave a satisfactory response. How do you get “~3 rounds” from that?
There was no reason for you to do that, you got an answer that addressed those concerns.
Notice how Nesov, by focusing back on the object level after the issue of communicating citations was resolved, was able to deal with in this comment.