Why is this author tolerated on Hacker News? He's not actually knowledgable about 99% of subjects he posts about.

ngriffiths 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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"

	▲	bedobi 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		you do you, I don't come here for superficially informed-looking articles written by people who are in fact not experts, informed or educated, I come here for the real deal it doesn't help that sCotT aLexAndEr is also as close as you can come to the modern dressed up version of a eugenicist (again, not based on any actual expertise) but I rest my case

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simianparrot 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Because HN is YCombinator which has invested in probably hundreds of «AI» firms by now. Including OpenAI.

Allowing slop articles like this literally prints them evaluation money.