Comment by ngriffiths
15 hours ago
I think there are many ways someone with his lack of expertise can still be valuable, including:
- Making connections to other subjects that an expert would miss. The hall of fame of sigmoid predictions is just excellent, I already know I'm going to be reminded of it some time in the future. Very entertaining way to get the point across.
- Writing about tricky concepts in a very accessible and elegant way, which experts are notoriously bad at doing themselves - they are often optimizing for other specialists.
- Being able to write with an air of speculation and experimentation with ideas that experts and institutions often can't afford. Experts have to maintain their track record; Scott Alexander can say "lol just double the timeline"
[flagged]
> I don't come here for
It's good that you come to HN expecting high standards of content and discussion.
> sCotT aLexAndEr
This counts as a sneer, which is against the guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). You may not owe the writer anything but you owe the audience better than this.
> as close as you can come to the modern dressed up version of a eugenicist
Their writing about genetic determinism is a turnoff to me too. But this essay is about a different topic, and a piece of writing by a writer who is known for writing substantively about a variety of topics should be evaluated on its own terms.
Sometimes the most significant contribution from an article is not the article itself but found in the comments.