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Academia gatekeeps knowledge by using unnecessarily complex language, alienating formats, makes it so you have to be both dedicated and culturally familiar to understand it. Rationalist writing, by contrast, is extremely accessible Feels like a similar vibe to elon and twitter

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𝕮𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆 (is an aspiring alignment theorist)

@CineraVerinia_2

Dec 14, 2022

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@Aella_Girl

Rationalists have a repertoire of specialised jargon. LW has its own implicit formatting conventions, norms, background knowledge and unjustified assumptions, etc. I think "rationalist writing is extremely accessible to the general public is wrong". Cc:

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and

I think specialized jargon the way rats use it isn't the same thing as unnecessarily complicated language! When I read rat writing it feels like i'm learning a normal set of concepts, when i try to read academia it feels like it's trying to stab me in the brain with knives

8:06 AM · Dec 14, 2022

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𝕮𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆 (is an aspiring alignment theorist)

Replying to

and

What fields of academia are you comparing it to? Rat writing hasn't been IME clearer than CS papers I've read. I don't get the impression that maths or physics papers are generally of poor clarity either.

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Hm, not really. For instance, when you read a paper on math with all the prereqs, in most cases it will be super clear. If you don't understand a concept - it means that you need to learn sth else before reading this paper, not that author is purposely unclear.

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Maybe you could learn some Geek Fu to defend? wiki.c2.com/?GeekFu

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What part of academia? I read articles on arXiv that don't try to stab me in the brain, but maybe I learned their linguistic tricks and don't notice it anymore. I haven't had trouble as long as I stay away from papers by Postmodernists and skip over quantum physics equations.

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