site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   2915 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 8, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

https://www.richardhanania.com/p/the-case-against-most-books

Tldr: Most books are not information-dense.

I largely agree. It seems to me that most writing has many more examples than required (I might need only 2 to get the point, 5 is far too many), long and numerous analogies, etc.

Do you have any examples of writing that actually follows the DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principle?

I've also realized that the DRY principle is a great thing for writing code but terrible for conversation. If you only say what needs to be said, then you come off as "dry". I suppose 1 more reason added to the "conversation isn't about exchanging ideas or information" bin.

@HelmedHorror @curious_straight_ca @FCfromSSC @fmaa @sun

This article does a great job of making the point that the past is important.:

If there are axioms in Silicon Valley, at the top of the list must surely be the belief that we’re making onward and upward progress. Spend any time in a non-catatonic state in any cafe or popular hangout on University Ave in Palo Alto, or in Sunnyvale, Menlo Park, or Mountain View, and you’ll quickly realize you’re in a culture that’s entirely focused on the future, and thinks technology, or “technoscience” is what counts, and not much else. (Full disclosure: I was an entrepreneur in Palo Alto, and to be fair, obsessing about the future is what entrepreneurs do. But this is not what I mean here.) The mindset is ubiquitous. Even advocates of what I’ve called “Fearesome AI” (as opposed to “Dreamy AI”), who worry about the existential risks of AI run amok, are really just the flip side of the exponential progress coin. They’ve bought into the myth of exponential progress, too. Techno-futurists and increasingly a confused media and public simply take for granted that we’re on a rocketship to technological wonders, which somehow also equates to a theory of history and human progress writ large.

One terrible consequence of this pervasive thinking (besides being totally wrong, as I’ll explain) is the short shrifting of all things historical. As Renaissance thinkers like Petrarch well knew, the past is a treasure trove of not just human folly but human greatness. Chronicalled in the past are civilizations surviving and thriving for millenia, and artistic and engineering feats that in some cases remain unrivaled today. So, why are we so cocksure about 21st century progress? Can anyone today write like James Joyce or Leo Tolstoy, or Virginia Wolf? Who rivals Leonardo Da Vinci in their understanding of figure and form? Where are the orators like Cicero? The essayists and humanists like Montaigne? The philosophers like Plato, or Aristotle, or Lucretius or Epicurus? Or, for that matter, Alan Turing and John Von Neumann? We have our own talents, to be sure, but this doesn’t cancel the great talents of the past, or somehow render them obsolete and otiose. Yes, we do build on the past. But we also learn from it.

Alas, the ahistorical bubble we’re currently living in not only doesn’t look back but seemingly can’t look back, as if it would stall progress and mire us in bigotry and irrelevance rather than provide insight, knowledge and wisdom. It’s a profoundly simplistic and troubling view. We are not just building “on top of” the past like legos, we must continuously return to it to get our own bearings. There’s a cyclical nature to progress. In this spirit, I’ll be developing the theme of “the return,” or as the Italian Renaissance thinker Giambattista Vico called it, the ricorso. (My next book is titled The Return: Why the 21st Century Looks Like the Past (so far), Not the Future We Wanted. More on this in future posts.)

Literally the single actual point anywhere in this article is that the very vague and informal metric that is Moore's law is slowing down. It doesn't even attempt arguing for the past's importance, letting alone doing a great job at it. It just lists off a series of applause lights and hopes you don't notice it never puts forth any actual arguments.

Argues that there are things the ancients can do we still can’t reproduce today? Asks if any modern writers are as good as former ones? Etc

It doesn't actually argue this since it doesn't specify any of these things, except Da Vinci's understanding of figure and form. Which I think is matched by millions of art students worldwide who've practiced figure drawing. The internet is flooded with artists of absolutely astounding technical skill by historical standards and no one cares.

He doesn't give any criteria to judge the various categories of writers by. Or even give a category for Turing and Von Nuemann. As computer scientists, they knew far less than any halfway competent CS student these days. And these students do not learn from their original writings because other people have since found better ways to formulate their results. As pioneers in a nascent field of science, who or what field are you comparing them to and finding the modern analogues wanting?

To expand on the second paragraph point because it's relevant to the original discussion, there's no reason to believe that the first person to come up with an idea would also come up with the best way to structure and explain it.

And indeed, students in any hard science don't learn from the original writings of the pioneers in their field, because that would be a very inefficient way to learn. The original writings serve mostly as a historical curiosity. And as the contrapositive, I feel that any field where people overly focus on the original texts immediately shows itself to be more about status signaling games than any actual content.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats