I feel like I should put some kind of “epistemic status” tag on this indicating that I am arguing for a position that I don’t really hold so much as I find the idea of it interesting.
I think whether or not it’s the wrong angle depends on the goals.
Pretend for the moment that I am respected enough that Eliezer and Anna Salamon would accept my invitation to a private Slack channel or private forum. Further stipulate that we agree that we will only invite or accept a new member to the Slack channel if we all look over the candidate’s history and agree. We establish a constitution such that new members also gain some measure of voting power in admitting new members. Members who have been admitted but turn out to be jerks can be ejected by some method.
This allows all the uncontroversially good, smart, conscientious LWers and outlying rationalists to be admitted relatively quickly. At a certain point, perhaps LW-Exclusive members start sponsoring newer folks who don’t have established track records of good posts or accomplishments, and these people can be admitted on a provisional basis.
It’s true that “anybody could do this”, but anybody could create a new forum and call it Less Wrong 2.0 and imbue it with better features, and that wouldn’t necessarily be a stupid thing to do.
If you did that but didn’t actually make it a properly walled garden, and everyone indeed switched over, then that means all the lower-quality posters and randos also switch over, which somewhat defeats the purpose.
This is not directly addressing your point, just inspired by it:
If you make a private Slack channel, how will other potentially valuable members know there is something they should desire to join? I mean, at this moment we would be drawing on the knowledge existing outside the channel, but a few years later, to the outside world your private Slack channel would seem like some kind of a black hole, where smart people disappear and you never hear about them again.
Of course, unless there is also some kind of output—for example a blog without a comment section, where the members of the private Slack sometimes publish their wisdom—that other people can see. Now it’s about convincing the people on the channel that they should once in a while publish an article for the outside world, inside of just debating comfortably within their bubble.
Now a more direct answer:
Yes, it’s true that sometimes a very simple plan, executed well, has great value, while a grand design may be ruined by an unforeseen but fatal flaw. I still believe that, statistically speaking, doing some work upfront is a signal of being serious about something.
Like, there are two different issues here: (1) whether your plan will work well, on condition that people will join you, and (2) whether you can convince people about it, so they actually will join you. You could easily succeed in the first step and fail in the second one. Being a respected celebrity can make the second step easier. Doing some work upfront is solving the second step the hard way.
I feel like I should put some kind of “epistemic status” tag on this indicating that I am arguing for a position that I don’t really hold so much as I find the idea of it interesting.
I think whether or not it’s the wrong angle depends on the goals.
Pretend for the moment that I am respected enough that Eliezer and Anna Salamon would accept my invitation to a private Slack channel or private forum. Further stipulate that we agree that we will only invite or accept a new member to the Slack channel if we all look over the candidate’s history and agree. We establish a constitution such that new members also gain some measure of voting power in admitting new members. Members who have been admitted but turn out to be jerks can be ejected by some method.
This allows all the uncontroversially good, smart, conscientious LWers and outlying rationalists to be admitted relatively quickly. At a certain point, perhaps LW-Exclusive members start sponsoring newer folks who don’t have established track records of good posts or accomplishments, and these people can be admitted on a provisional basis.
It’s true that “anybody could do this”, but anybody could create a new forum and call it Less Wrong 2.0 and imbue it with better features, and that wouldn’t necessarily be a stupid thing to do.
If you did that but didn’t actually make it a properly walled garden, and everyone indeed switched over, then that means all the lower-quality posters and randos also switch over, which somewhat defeats the purpose.
This is not directly addressing your point, just inspired by it:
If you make a private Slack channel, how will other potentially valuable members know there is something they should desire to join? I mean, at this moment we would be drawing on the knowledge existing outside the channel, but a few years later, to the outside world your private Slack channel would seem like some kind of a black hole, where smart people disappear and you never hear about them again.
Of course, unless there is also some kind of output—for example a blog without a comment section, where the members of the private Slack sometimes publish their wisdom—that other people can see. Now it’s about convincing the people on the channel that they should once in a while publish an article for the outside world, inside of just debating comfortably within their bubble.
Now a more direct answer:
Yes, it’s true that sometimes a very simple plan, executed well, has great value, while a grand design may be ruined by an unforeseen but fatal flaw. I still believe that, statistically speaking, doing some work upfront is a signal of being serious about something.
Like, there are two different issues here: (1) whether your plan will work well, on condition that people will join you, and (2) whether you can convince people about it, so they actually will join you. You could easily succeed in the first step and fail in the second one. Being a respected celebrity can make the second step easier. Doing some work upfront is solving the second step the hard way.