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Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

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Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#81

Post by jelliclesfarm »

ashtonkem wrote: post #77
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #72

>A more serious analysis of brevity might define it as “the entropy of a parse tree recursively inlined/macroexpanded down to language primitives.” This suggests our focus ought to be on two questions: how compressible are our primitives, and how can we enable users to achieve something close to optimal compression? Since the first question has a relative measure (what’s the compression ratio for our expanded parse t…

It is quite explicit in the article that "brevity" is measured in literal characters. From a PG quote in the article: > It would not be far from the truth to say that a hacker about to write a program decides what language to use, at least subconsciously, based on the total number of characters he’ll have to type.

i know what brevity means. i choose to call it 'elegant' for the purposes of comparing it to his essays as the article mentions. his essays can sometimes be more rambling before it gets to the point. albeit precise. imo.

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#82

Post by ashtonkem »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #81
ashtonkem wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is quite explicit in the article that "brevity" is measured in literal characters. From a PG quote in the article: > It would not be far from the truth to say that a hacker about to write a program decides what language to use, at least subconsciously, based on the total number of characters he’ll have to type.

i know what brevity means. i choose to call it 'elegant' for the purposes of comparing it to his essays as the article mentions. his essays can sometimes be more rambling before it gets to the point. albeit precise. imo.

More precise, according to whom? If PG is explicitly defining brevity as fewer characters, then redefining it to “elegance” is to simply ignore what PG said and replace it with something else. Perhaps that indeed is a better working definition, but if we’re commenting on PG’s articles then we need to look at what he actually said and not what you wish he’d said.

If you want to write your own articles and explicitly replace brevity with elegance, don’t let me stop you.

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#83

Post by billy_beef »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #80
billy_beef wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we as in his potential audience, the public, his readers etc. I don't feel like sharing the specific motivations, that is what the piece you're commenting on is doing. I'm not taking someone's assessment at face value, I read it, considered the sources, considered pg, and am using it to build an understanding of his work.

> we as in his potential audience, the public, his readers etc. we all have different perspectives and priorities, I'm not sure how you or I could decide for someone else that PG was not worth listening to and if I decide that for myself then I don't listen to him. If I want to persuade others that they should also ignore him then I make my case on the merits. > I'm not taking someone's assessment at face value, I re…

Your assertion was largely that an article like this didn’t have value. I explained why it does. You are free debate the points of pg here, but that’s not how our disagreement began and you are asking me to defend a different point than the one I commented initially to defend. Do you still believe the article is just a way to label pg as bad, or do you see why a discussion of issues of his credibility is important?

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#84

Post by jelliclesfarm »

ashtonkem wrote: post #82
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i know what brevity means. i choose to call it 'elegant' for the purposes of comparing it to his essays as the article mentions. his essays can sometimes be more rambling before it gets to the point. albeit precise. imo.

More precise, according to whom? If PG is explicitly defining brevity as fewer characters, then redefining it to “elegance” is to simply ignore what PG said and replace it with something else. Perhaps that indeed is a better working definition, but if we’re commenting on PG’s articles then we need to look at what he actually said and not what you wish he’d said. If you want to write your own articles and explicitly r…

wtf? (the rest of my response in it's brevity.)

thanks. have a great day.

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#85

Post by chordalkeyboard »

billy_beef wrote: post #83
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we as in his potential audience, the public, his readers etc. we all have different perspectives and priorities, I'm not sure how you or I could decide for someone else that PG was not worth listening to and if I decide that for myself then I don't listen to him. If I want to persuade others that they should also ignore him then I make my case on the merits. > I'm not taking someone's assessment at face value, I re…

Your assertion was largely that an article like this didn’t have value. I explained why it does. You are free debate the points of pg here, but that’s not how our disagreement began and you are asking me to defend a different point than the one I commented initially to defend. Do you still believe the article is just a way to label pg as bad, or do you see why a discussion of issues of his credibility is important?

my assertion was that its of questionable value to add someone to a list of "wrong-thinkers" or in other ways suggest that they have no further contributions to make without supporting that assessment. Its great to criticize someone's thought, its not so great to attempt to deplatform them by persuading other people not to examine their ideas.

> Do you still believe the article is just a way to label pg as bad, or do you see why a discussion of issues of his credibility is important?

I think its great to discuss his credibility. I think its less great to try to write him off based on the results of that discussion.

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#86

Post by billy_beef »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #85
billy_beef wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assertion was largely that an article like this didn’t have value. I explained why it does. You are free debate the points of pg here, but that’s not how our disagreement began and you are asking me to defend a different point than the one I commented initially to defend. Do you still believe the article is just a way to label pg as bad, or do you see why a discussion of issues of his credibility is important?

my assertion was that its of questionable value to add someone to a list of "wrong-thinkers" or in other ways suggest that they have no further contributions to make without supporting that assessment. Its great to criticize someone's thought, its not so great to attempt to deplatform them by persuading other people not to examine their ideas. > Do you still believe the article is just a way to label pg as bad, or do…

I'm not writing him off, certainly. But I also don't see how this labels him as a wrong thinker? It demonstrates that he's missed the mark a lot as a result of his over-reliance on intuition. His technique for finding truth seems amiss. I don't think anyone is deplatforming him either. He's still able to write his blog and use all of his internet accounts. This article is compelling his audience to be more critical of the technique he's using to figure things out.

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#87

Post by chordalkeyboard »

billy_beef wrote: post #86
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my assertion was that its of questionable value to add someone to a list of "wrong-thinkers" or in other ways suggest that they have no further contributions to make without supporting that assessment. Its great to criticize someone's thought, its not so great to attempt to deplatform them by persuading other people not to examine their ideas. > Do you still believe the article is just a way to label pg as bad, or do…

I'm not writing him off, certainly. But I also don't see how this labels him as a wrong thinker? It demonstrates that he's missed the mark a lot as a result of his over-reliance on intuition. His technique for finding truth seems amiss. I don't think anyone is deplatforming him either. He's still able to write his blog and use all of his internet accounts. This article is compelling his audience to be more critical o…

>> His attempts to grapple with the major issues of the present, especially as they intersect with his personal legacy, are so mired in intuition and incuriosity that they’re at best a distraction, and worst a real obstacle to understanding our paths forward. Unfortunately, this seems unlikely to ever change.

> What value is there in group-classifying the 'wrongthinkers', except to save people the exhaustion and torture of learning new and diverse ideas and for thinking for themselves?

I think we probably agree more than we disagree and just took different things from the discussion. The above quotes (one from the article and one from the original comment I replied to) are offered as an example of the sentiment I was replying to. Thanks for the discussion.

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