Eliezer Schlomo Yudkowsky / LessWrong

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This is about Scott Alexander but am I wrong in thinking this bit is super fucking disingenuous?
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What's the general impression on ZHPL's writing skills? From general osmosis/Internet oversaturation I'd estimate he's about the same or worse compared to Scott Alexander (Scott Siskind) and overall worse compared to Garth Nix. Unless I've entirely confused who he is and there's no overlap in topics or styles between the three authors I mentioned. Tell me if this should be posted in the BAP/Bronze Age Pervert thread instead.
 
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What's the general impression on ZHPL's writing skills? From general osmosis/Internet oversaturation I'd estimate he's about the same or worse compared to Scott Alexander (Scott Siskind) and overall worse compared to Garth Nix. Unless I've entirely confused who he is and there's no overlap in topics or styles between the three authors I mentioned. Tell me if this should be posted in the BAP/Bronze Age Pervert thread instead.
I really enjoy his work he's hilarious and creepy, a unique combination in horror, and writes a good pastiche and AnOminous likes him as well. His nonfiction is pretty bog standard rat/postrat stuff however, but he's funny and doesnt believe every word he writes will somehow save the world, so I'd rate him above Scotty boy, I haven't read (or heard of)Garth Nix so I personally have no idea.
The BAP thread is a bunch of retarded browns naming der Juden so more or less impossible to have any actual discussions about any of the people mentioned in the threads judehaß has its place but being all you talk about is gay and retarded.
 
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What's the general impression on ZHPL's writing skills? From general osmosis/Internet oversaturation I'd estimate he's about the same or worse compared to Scott Alexander (Scott Siskind) and overall worse compared to Garth Nix. Unless I've entirely confused who he is and there's no overlap in topics or styles between the three authors I mentioned. Tell me if this should be posted in the BAP/Bronze Age Pervert thread instead.
He's not bad, but loves his gimmicks perhaps to excess. With regard to this thread, he's definitely one of the vague hangers-on around the Rat/Post-Rat scene, and was the one who coined the fairly accurate description of Rationalists as quokkas (archive); the Fuentes connection enters into it because apparently the Catboy Fuhrer has convinced himself that ZHPL is Scott Alexander (archive). I've taken ZHPL's word for it and can't be bothered to track down an actual Groyper source, so maybe there's an extra layer of gay-ops at play.
 
He's not bad, but loves his gimmicks perhaps to excess. With regard to this thread, he's definitely one of the vague hangers-on around the Rat/Post-Rat scene, and was the one who coined the fairly accurate description of Rationalists as quokkas (archive); the Fuentes connection enters into it because apparently the Catboy Fuhrer has convinced himself that ZHPL is Scott Alexander (archive). I've taken ZHPL's word for it and can't be bothered to track down an actual Groyper source, so maybe there's an extra layer of gay-ops at play.
Hes too mean to be scott alexander and how he talks about psychology isnt how a psychologist would talk about psychology, further proving groypers are fucking retarded browniods.
 
What's the general impression on ZHPL's writing skills? From general osmosis/Internet oversaturation I'd estimate he's about the same or worse compared to Scott Alexander (Scott Siskind) and overall worse compared to Garth Nix. Unless I've entirely confused who he is and there's no overlap in topics or styles between the three authors I mentioned. Tell me if this should be posted in the BAP/Bronze Age Pervert thread instead.
His fiction's pretty decent, though there's the nagging feeling that you could find some of the same stuff done better elsewhere. Probably shouldn't put a Borges quote in your header if you don't want people to realize they could get far better by reading Borges. His knack for satire lacks a delicate touch too, the story about people committing suicide so they can get carbon credits is just too heavy-handed of a sendup of environmentalism, but gets away with it by being short enough to not waste too much of your time. I can't say I really think that it was worth the quarter of a million in crypto or however much he made for the printed copy of his stuff, but in a world where mainstream published stuff is absolute dreck, his stuff is worth a bit of your time if you've already read Lovecraft, Borges, etc. and want something new.

His nonfiction goes between bangers dunking on people and long threads of general right-wing "women have taken over, we worship blacks too much...." type stuff. The fun stuff will eventually show up elsewhere and the other stuff isn't really worth reading.
He's not bad, but loves his gimmicks perhaps to excess.
I've got to guess you're talking about the one with the emojis (though honestly without the emojis I think this one would be his best) or the one with color-coding the messages the guys receiving, only to explain it later? The second one soured me because the climax was too predictable (Lovecraft monsters are walking around everywhere and you can't see them normally because everyone's addicted to wearing their AR headset) and I had no desire to go back and figure out exactly which messages came from where, especially with how long it was.
 
I've got to guess you're talking about the one with the emojis (though honestly without the emojis I think this one would be his best) or the one with color-coding the messages the guys receiving, only to explain it later?
It's true of almost all of his stories - the Gig Economy is my favourite of them and it has its wall of glossolalia, which might have emboldened him with the later ones. The second one went well beyond the various colours with all of its autistic (if occasionally funny) citations - those were as much part of his theme of hypertextual information as the text colouring. I do agree that the one with the emojis would be excellent without them; I don't think it was better than Borges' version of the story - a problem you highlighted above - but it brought enough of its own interesting ideas to the table to make it worth a read.
 
. I do agree that the one with the emojis would be excellent without them; I don't think it was better than Borges' version of the story - a problem you highlighted above - but it brought enough of its own interesting ideas to the table to make it worth a read.
I love Dont Make me Think and honestly the emojis add rather than subtract from the story.

edit: Plus this line alone:
French, 2029, The Conservative Case for State-Enforced Homosexuality.
Is worth the price of admission.
 
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I really enjoy his work he's hilarious and creepy, a unique combination in horror, and writes a good pastiche and AnOminous likes him as well. His nonfiction is pretty bog standard rat/postrat stuff however, but he's funny and doesnt believe every word he writes will somehow save the world, so I'd rate him above Scotty boy, I haven't read (or heard of)Garth Nix so I personally have no idea.
I'll compare three somewhat similar science fiction/fantasy short stories. Ordered by my opinion of quality, there's Shay Corsham Worsted by Garth Nix, The Demiurge's Older Brother by Scott Siskind, and The Gig Economy by Zero HP Lovecraft.

I'm nowhere near the world's top consumer of short fiction, but among those I've read Shay Corsham Worsted is the first one I'd recommend for general audiences. It does not require knowledge of even basic Fantasy or Sci-Fi tropes that many genre fiction readers overestimate the commonality of, as it's set in a reasonably familiar and well known part of a familiar history. It's short and straight forward, and does not feature the common twist ending that I dislike. A familiar setting lets the author put quite a bit of depth into very little space, as the history of the Department and Shay are densely implied by the dates given, against the fall of the British empire and the lead up to Thatcher and the Falklands war.

The Demiurge's Older Brother is good for what it tries to do, and it's far superior to the alternate version, but it's not going to come out and tell you what it means. If you don't already know all the content it's just nerd wank gibberish. As far as general Sci-Fi audiences would be able to tell, it's Ghost in the Shell without any of the subtlety. The ending might be called a twist, but only slightly. The buildup is straight forward enough. It's a product of its time however, as further serious research into the subject matter revealed the type of negotiation tactics depicted to have only marginal usefulness in even the more speculative possible futures.

The Gig Economy is reasonably well done, but at some point the imitation of a 4channer's rambling blog becomes a 4channer's rambling blog, with all the commentary hidden in various details that I know, but most people don't. This is opposed to The Demiurge's Older Brother that still works on a surface level even if the reader's only background knowledge is watching a joke video about Gnosticism years ago, and especially opposed to Shay Corsham Worsted, a story that should work for almost everyone. Gig has the most typos, followed by Demiurge. Shay has none that I detected in a casual read-through.
This part was funny though, a reference to the short story The Nine Billion Names of God, where monks buy a computer to list them all out.
I also secured a series of “strategic partnerships”, a term of art which means we add another company’s logo to our website and this hopefully convinces elderly Asian day traders to buy our token, $QBLA, which harnesses the power of the blockchain to calculate all of the nine billion names of god, after which point no more tokens will be issued and miners will rely on transaction fees.
Maybe also a reference to the SSC/Scott Alexander web fiction Unsong based on a very similar concept, as the ticker $QBLA is a reference to Kabbala, a topic he features heavily.
Archive for The Demiurge's Older Brother: https://archive.is/G19ZU
Archive for The Gig Economy: https://archive.ph/9JWWX
 
If you don't already know all the content it's just nerd wank gibberish.
I remember trying to read Unsong Book years ago and getting a little ways in before dropping out and was never quite sure what didn't click with me, and this may be it. I tried reading the story by him you linked and holy shit, knowing more about the rat/postrat sphere now than I did trying to read Unsong it's almost painful. You're being far kinder about this in your review than I would be. Scifi may try to play off a lack of skill in prose and dialog by emphasizing interesting ideas, but rarely have I seen a scifi story so utterly devoid of artistry.

Following up on my point about 0HPL's nonfiction, I took a look at his substack for the first time ever (I haven't read his stuff since he was on wordpress, which he seems to have gotten banned from). I went to the nonfiction section and clicked on Zandaya and the Art of Multiverse Maintenance (archive) to refresh myself on how he writes this stuff. He begins by taking a swipe at SSC, then proceeds to write 13,429 words (including footnotes) that meander around to finally make the point that Hollywood is anti-white. You can find this same exact content in any A&N post and it won't take you a fraction as long to read. Pins him pretty well as a former rationalist turned dissident-right poster.
 
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