Wow thank you for replying so fast! I donated $5k just now, mainly because you reminded me that lightcone may not meet goal 1 and that’s definitely worth meeting.
About web design, am only slightly persuaded by your response. In the example of Twitter, I don’t really buy that there’s public evidence that twitter’s website work besides user-invisible algorithm changes has had much impact. I only use Following page, don’t use spaces, lists, voice, or anything on twitter. Comparing twitter with bluesky/threads/whatever, really looks to me like cultural stuff, moderation, and advertisement are the meat, not the sites. Something like StackOverflow has more complexity that actually impacts website, in some way (like there is lots of implicit complexity in tweet reply trees and social groups but that only impacts website through user-invisible algorithms). And a core part of my model is that recommendation algoritms have a much lower ceiling for LessWrong because it doesn’t have enough data volume. Like I don’t expect to miss stuff i really wanted to see on LW, reading the titles of most posts isn’t hard (i also have people recommend posts in person which helps...). Maybe in my model StackOverflow is at the ceiling of web dev leveraged-ness, because there is enough volume of posts written by quality people who can be nudged to spend a little more time on quality and can be sorted through, or something (vague thought).
When I look at lesswrong, it seems extremely bottlenecked on post quality. I think having the best AIs (o3 when it comes out might help significantly) help write and improve the core content of posts might make a big difference. I would bet that interventions that don’t route through more effort/intelligence/knowledge going into writing main posts would make me like LessWrong much more.
Like I don’t expect to miss stuff i really wanted to see on LW, reading the titles of most posts isn’t hard (i also have people recommend posts in person which helps...).
I do think you are very likely overfitting heavily on your experience :P
As an example, the majority of traffic on LW goes to posts >1 year old, and for those, it sure matters how people discover them, and what UI you have for highlighting which of the ~100k LessWrong posts to read. Things like the Best of LessWrong, Sequences and Codex pages make a big difference in what people read and what gets traffic, as does the concept page.
I agree for some of the most engaged people it matters more what the culture and writing tools and other things are, but I think for the majority of LessWrong users, even weighted by activity, recommendation systems and algorithm changes and UI affordances make a big difference.
Like I don’t expect to miss stuff i really wanted to see on LW, reading the titles of most posts isn’t hard
It’s hard for me! I had to give up on trying.
The problem is that if I read the titles of most posts, I end up wanting to read the contents of a significant minority of posts, too many for me to actually read.
Wow thank you for replying so fast! I donated $5k just now, mainly because you reminded me that lightcone may not meet goal 1 and that’s definitely worth meeting.
About web design, am only slightly persuaded by your response. In the example of Twitter, I don’t really buy that there’s public evidence that twitter’s website work besides user-invisible algorithm changes has had much impact. I only use Following page, don’t use spaces, lists, voice, or anything on twitter. Comparing twitter with bluesky/threads/whatever, really looks to me like cultural stuff, moderation, and advertisement are the meat, not the sites. Something like StackOverflow has more complexity that actually impacts website, in some way (like there is lots of implicit complexity in tweet reply trees and social groups but that only impacts website through user-invisible algorithms). And a core part of my model is that recommendation algoritms have a much lower ceiling for LessWrong because it doesn’t have enough data volume. Like I don’t expect to miss stuff i really wanted to see on LW, reading the titles of most posts isn’t hard (i also have people recommend posts in person which helps...). Maybe in my model StackOverflow is at the ceiling of web dev leveraged-ness, because there is enough volume of posts written by quality people who can be nudged to spend a little more time on quality and can be sorted through, or something (vague thought).
When I look at lesswrong, it seems extremely bottlenecked on post quality. I think having the best AIs (o3 when it comes out might help significantly) help write and improve the core content of posts might make a big difference. I would bet that interventions that don’t route through more effort/intelligence/knowledge going into writing main posts would make me like LessWrong much more.
I do think you are very likely overfitting heavily on your experience :P
As an example, the majority of traffic on LW goes to posts >1 year old, and for those, it sure matters how people discover them, and what UI you have for highlighting which of the ~100k LessWrong posts to read. Things like the Best of LessWrong, Sequences and Codex pages make a big difference in what people read and what gets traffic, as does the concept page.
I agree for some of the most engaged people it matters more what the culture and writing tools and other things are, but I think for the majority of LessWrong users, even weighted by activity, recommendation systems and algorithm changes and UI affordances make a big difference.
It’s hard for me! I had to give up on trying.
The problem is that if I read the titles of most posts, I end up wanting to read the contents of a significant minority of posts, too many for me to actually read.