Comment by springtail5
5 days ago
This is basically a dunk piece. Scott’s and gwern’s posts are often long because they contain arguments, which ironically the author does not use, other to point to one gwern post. He says that rationalists substitute thoroughness for verbosity when gwern’s post does the exact opposite!
It’s easy to dismiss the argument with “lol nicotine bad”, but I think it’s good to examine studies on the addictiveness of nicotine when not smoked, and not assume it would be just like smoking. There are plenty of things that seem obvious but are not and it’s always good to be rigorous.
I think Scott in particular just really enjoys writing. He is very articulate and obviously just brimming with clever connections and turns of phrase. And he can generate a lot of words very easily.
When I was younger, sometimes I would just get carried away by the splendor and awe of it all and soak in the 25,000 word articles (or whatever they are.)
Today I would say that either he has fallen off a little, or I've just grown a little weary of the form, but I don't really get the same rush out of his writing anymore; and I notice more of the motivated reasoning and cheap tricks.
Still, sometimes I'll come across one of his posts and think 'damn, Scott's still got it.'
What the author here misses is that the verbosity is often a signal of work done.
It's like the "alternatives considered" section in a design doc or RFC: it shows you've thought through different approaches, considered trade-offs, etc. It's a little like showing your work combined with taking the reader on a journey.
Precisely the signal that has been lost since the advent of LLMs. Voluminous work has now almost become synonymous with a signal of no effort.
Also literally the post he links to for "its bad actually" is a blog about how it's great and not very addictive and just has some tweets from people who apparently didn't pay attention to the nicotine gum/patch/pouch recommendation in gwern's post and instead started using various forms of tobacco. Very sloppy all around.