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Notes -
What does everyone think of Eliezer Yudkowsky?
I just realized this website was born from /r/TheMotte, which came from /r/slatestarcodex, which came from Scott Alexander, who came from LessWrong, which was created by Eliezer himself. He's technically a grandfather of this community.
I for one think he's more influential than he's given credit for, and I consider myself lucky to have come across his writings in my younger days.
I'd consider him a reasonably smart person and a great analytic writer (a lot of the Sequences really do what they set out to, which is to crystallize a particular useful reasoning principle into a well-delineated maxim that you can actually remind yourself of in a situation where it is helpful), unfortunately held back by high levels of narcissism, which firstly make him fail to apply the same critical reasoning he champions to core areas that pertain to his conception of his own status and secondly turn him, on a personal level, into a snake.
He may or may not be the "greatest living philosopher", as @Quantumfreakonomics said below, but this is strictly an indictment of living philosophers who are willing to own the label. I have heard better philosophy from my math olympiad buddies at age 16 during addled seminar camp all-nighters.
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