I thoroughly enjoyed this post; it reminds me of the sequences.
Some people in this thread have claimed that such writing doesn’t appeal to the three-sigma crowd. However, I would prefer to read such a post every week. The difference between the sequences, HPMOR, and the contributions to LessWrong of people like Roko and Wei Dai, and the drab, insulting rubbish I encountered in the official education system, is day and night, and it would be sad if young people in 2014 were to lack that opportunity.
This advice could not be more false. Although I’m not fit to lick his boots, in my opinion the beauty of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s writing is quite that:
you’re doing it all wrong, you should be working on this stuff like this instead
Because it is true.
Incidentally, I believe in the existence of natural elites.
On that note: I find the CFAR logo peculiar. I am reminded of the Aten disk, a totalitarian God symbol whose hands massage all Egyptian minds. In the CFAR logo, the mouth of this diffident-looking rationalist is firmly blocked up, but his ideas and inclinations are being surveyed; the God figure is not shown, this being impolite in today’s society.
I wonder whether Beeminder is a similarly useful, surreptitious survey.
The sequences were a good way to spread Bayesian rationality: a simple matter of one of the world’s foremost intellects speaking to people directly, who in turn have their own projects that circulate Bayesian memes. I was given no sense that these projects ought to be brought into line, maybe Eliezer has changed his mind about that though.