This is a special post for quick takes by Raemon. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
This is an experiment in short-form content on LW2.0. I'll be using the comment section of this post as a repository of short, sometimes-half-baked posts that either:
don't feel ready to be written up as a full post
I think the process of writing them up might make them worse (i.e. longer than they need to be)
I ask people not to create top-level comments here, but feel free to reply to comments like you would a FB post.
What are the skills for communicating "impossible problems can be defeated" in a way that people will actually hear?
One of them seems to be the recognition that, as written, the statement is obviously false. Impossible means it cannot be defeated. Only by warping the definition of the word away from what it implies in common usage, and doing so for Rule of Cool purposes, does the statement actually make sense. But even when the reader/listener recognizes that, they are likely to turn up their nose at you because you're Trying Too Hard to sound Cool and Awesome instead of using simple, descriptive words that don't sneak in connotations about how Amazing you are for having done the "impossible."[1]
Another one seems to be giving examples of supposedly "impossible" problems that have been defeated already.[2]Always give examples![3] An ounce of history is worth a volume of logic.[4] No matter how compellingly-written or self-consistent a purely theoretical framework seems to be, if it doesn't map onto concrete results, people will dismiss it as useless.[5]Show us the cake, dammit!
"I've done the impossible!" and "I've done something really hard!" have different connotations, and thus demand different status-assignments, in typical parlance.
Specifically, defeated by you personally. Or at least by someone you know who is employing the same broad cognitive strategies as the ones you're trying to teach. Newton and Einstein don't count, unless you can convincingly argue why their example is similar in relevant ways to yours.
Examples that you can explain, mind you! Eliezer is optimizing for Deep Mystery in Shut up and do the impossible!, and he doesn't describe any specific cognitive procedures he employed. It's cool as a piece of antimeme-destroying evocative writing, but that's not enough.
This is an experiment in short-form content on LW2.0. I'll be using the comment section of this post as a repository of short, sometimes-half-baked posts that either:
I ask people not to create top-level comments here, but feel free to reply to comments like you would a FB post.