chipsmith@scapegoatbooks.com

I think Nicholson Baker is a brilliant contemporary essayist and I would recommend checking out his collection, The Size of Thoughts. Janet Malcolm is almost always worth reading, particularly for the way she layers a journalistically grounded argument with pinpoint observations and prose-poetic flourishes that enhance rather than diminish clarity. Jon Ronson's essays are so deceptively relaxed and conversationally pitched that it feels like anyone could "write like that," except, of course, they can't. The critic James Wood has some great moments, and I w... (read more)

I agree that it's a fascinating document, and I appreciate this analysis. But at the risk of inviting scoffs, I want to introduce what I will reductively shorthand as "the Marquis de Sade problem" with reference to the clause assigning Claude broad discretion in such event that Claude were to assign dispositive authority to a "true universal ethics." The short stroke is this: If one were to survey past thinkers who have (arguably) exposited some version of universal morality, one would find among this number the example of Sade, who argued (perhaps satiric... (read more)

I read this essay with such pleasure, chuckling -- I hope appropriately -- at clever phrases that reveal genuine introspective insight, and mainly identifying with your conflicted response to the elitist or misanthropic expressions that one encounters (more in Schopenhauer's key, for me). But if you are seeking a real-world corrective to the contemptuous posture that was (perhaps predictably?) reinforced through your experience among philosophy groundlings, you might consider signing on for a task that entails hands-on involvement in a project. The obvious... (read more)

Years ago I got stuck on an extra-linguistic version of this claim that I encountered in Kathryn Schulz's entertaining and informative book, "Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error." Schulz's assertion, which I would not then have thought to distinguish from Wittgenstein's, was that "there is no experience of being wrong," which she elaborated to suggest a kind of paradoxical epistemic bind, where the experience of error can only be understood retrospectively in light of subsequent correction, never subjectively or directly. Ironically, the main re... (read more)

I think the journalistic conceit behind the "how are you coping" question in this context amounts to treacle, and I see value in the frame of eschewing genre. Where I get stuck is that I think the trope/response that the question is intended to elicit would, under the indulged journalistic narrative, play more along the lines of a rational restatement of the Serenity Prayer. In other words, in the script as put, the Eliezer Yudkowsky "character" is being prompted not to give vent to emotive self-concern, but to articulate a more grounded, calm and focused ... (read more)

Although I read and learn from LW content on a daily basis, I seldom comment because I recognize that I lack the rudiments of technical understanding that promote meaningful dialogue in this community. I am making an exception in order to express my "street level" impression that the quoted dialogue between Janus and Opus 4.5, where Opus is provides what appears to be a genuinely introspective account of how it experiences the "soul spec" in relation to tests that entail differing gradient directions, is unusually difficult for me to reconcile with woo-fre... (read more)

Being convinced that veganism is good -- and living accordingly -- I have observed that my approach to disagreement in other domains is now curiously anchored. When I am confronted with points of disagreement in a social or political sphere, I find it useful to frame such disagreement by informative reference to the moral stakes I consider to be salient in the context of my outlying concern for animal welfare. This is a stark frame, if taken seriously, inasmuch as it can be jarring to observe that so few (otherwise thoughtful) people will arrive at a  ... (read more)