As an insight into the power of Wikipedia. When I first found lesswrong when googling something I read a couple of articles, thought “this seems good, if a bit weird”, and then read its Wikipedia page before going any further.
At the time my view (which I remember saying to a friend who was looking up the website after I recommended an article) was “Its mostly right, but fixates a weird amount on the basilisk thing”.
It certainly works. Another friend of mine recently opinionated “everyone on LW is an idiot, because basilisk thing”, which was interesting because I didn’t know that friend knew about LW at all, and from the basilisk thing mentioned it seemed likely they had just read its Wikipedia. (To them, the argument is not “All users of this website are idiots because I think one topic discussed on it once was dumb”. But instead “All users of this website are idiots because the one thing the website apparently discusses seems dumb”. Its important that the basilisk on wiki’s LW article was not one thing out of 10 or 20. But the single one thing.)
I am here because the Wikipedia page didn’t put me off reading LW.
As an insight into the power of Wikipedia. When I first found lesswrong when googling something I read a couple of articles, thought “this seems good, if a bit weird”, and then read its Wikipedia page before going any further.
At the time my view (which I remember saying to a friend who was looking up the website after I recommended an article) was “Its mostly right, but fixates a weird amount on the basilisk thing”.
It certainly works. Another friend of mine recently opinionated “everyone on LW is an idiot, because basilisk thing”, which was interesting because I didn’t know that friend knew about LW at all, and from the basilisk thing mentioned it seemed likely they had just read its Wikipedia. (To them, the argument is not “All users of this website are idiots because I think one topic discussed on it once was dumb”. But instead “All users of this website are idiots because the one thing the website apparently discusses seems dumb”. Its important that the basilisk on wiki’s LW article was not one thing out of 10 or 20. But the single one thing.)
I am here because the Wikipedia page didn’t put me off reading LW.