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lain@lain@lain.com (2026-10-15 19:49:10)
https://alexwennerberg.com/blog/2026-10-13-long.html
> "It seems to me that, in this community, verbosity is a substitute for thoroughness: surely, if someone wrote a lot about something, and is able to demonstrate that by producing a large volume of text, they must have something worthwhile to say about it? Consider when blogger Gwern explained that nicotine, actually, is not addictive, and is good for you, as long as you don't smoke it, over the course of 9,000 words, with over 100 references. It turns out, actually, nicotine is addictive, and is bad for you even if you don't smoke it, as you probably already obviously knew."
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Blurry Moon@sun@shitposter.world (2026-10-15 19:55:20)
@lain I think rightly a lot of attention is paid to how you transmit correct ideas without appealing to impossible to quantify things like wisdom but clearly people are still not getting it right
Reply
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Blurry Moon@sun@shitposter.world (2026-10-15 19:56:29)
@lain I’m not comfortable either appealing to what is so called obviously right either
lain@lain@lain.com (2026-10-15 20:06:49)
@sun i think the rationalists program of teaching people how baysian statistics work is probably their most important contribution to being 'less wrong'