Comment by qlm

What diction is "appropriate to the subject matter" is a negotiation between author and reader.

I think the author is ok with it being inappropriate for many; it's clearly written for those who enjoy math or CS.

It's a middle school essay that is trying to score points based on the number of metaphors used. Very unappealing and I wouldn't call it technical.

EDIT: For all the people saying the writing is inspired by math/cs, that's not at all true. That's not how technical writing is done. This guy is just a poser.

A bit harsh, but I see what you mean. It is tempting to try and fit every description of the world into a rigorous technical straightjacket, perhaps because it feels like you have understood it better?

Maybe it is similar to how scientist get flack for writing in technical jargon instead of 'plain language'. Partly it is a necessity - to be unambiguous - however it is also partly a choice, a way to signal that you are doing Science, not just describing messing about with chemicals or whatever.

I'll be the first to admit I was unable to follow the article because of this.

To be fair, it's always an artistic choice if you think it is appropriate here or not, but, yeah, this article is a really heavy offender. Reading the "Abstract claim" I caught myself thinking that this word salad hardly makes any sense, but I don't know and am just gonna let it go, because I am not yet convinced that it's worth my time to decipher that.

Also, "asinine contemporary "rationalist" movement" is pretty lightweight in this regard. Making an art out of writing as bad as possible has been a professional skill of any "academic philosopher" (both "continental" and "analytical" sides) for a century at the very least.

I mean, I talk like this as well. It's not really intentional. My interests influence the language that I use.

Why is the rationalist movement asinine? I don't know much about it but it seems interesting.

I have observed it too, it is heavily inspired by economics and mathematics.

Saying "it's better to complete something imperfect than spend forever polishing" - dull, trite, anyone knows that. Saying "effort is a utility curve function that must be clamped to achieve meta-optimisation" - now that sounds clever

If I was going to be uncharitable, I think there is are corners of the internet where people write straightforward things dressed it up in technical language to launder it as somehow academic and data driven.

And you're right, it does show up in the worse parts of the EA / rationalist community.

(This writing style, at its worst, allows people to say things like "I don't want my tax spent on teaching poor kids to read" but without looking like complete psychopaths - "aggregate outcomes in standardised literacy programmes lag behind individualised tutorials")

That's not what the blog post here is doing, but it is definitely bad language use that is doing more work to obscure ideas than illuminate them

Just reading the abstract, I have to agree with you.

no, we need more of this, the opposite of this is Robin Williams destroying the poetry theory book in dead poeta society, the result was weak kids and one of them commited suicide. More technical stuff in relation to art is a good thing, but its expected that anglosaxon people have allergy to this, they think is somehow socialist or something and they need art to be unfefined etc