Without disagreeing with anything you say in this comment, let me note that the question I was asking was a narrow one, concerning only the matter of whether ‘we’ (by which I took you to mean: “the Less Wrong community”) do, or do not, care about impressing (or, more generally, care about our reputation with) unspecified people, or groups thereof, outside said Less Wrong community, who lack certain epistemic skills or norms.
Now, if the answer to this question is a flat “No”, then we are done here and nothing more needs to be said; all my earlier comments (to which you allude) apply, all your comments also apply, and in general we know where we stand.
However, supposing that the answer is instead (a suitably qualified) “Yes”, then there’s a conversation to be had.
That narrow point having been made, here’s a tentative start to that possibly-necessary conversation (to be disregarded if the “No” option is taken).
The difference between adjudicating the social legitimacy of objections in the comment section, and inclusion in the Best-of-2018 compilation, doesn’t seem that relevant to me—does it seem so to you? Or am I missing something else?
Well, perhaps you are. As far as the “social legitimacy of objections in the comment section” goes, if we ban certain sorts of comments (along the lines discussed in the threads you linked), then we’ve crippled our own ability to have epistemically productive conversations, and generally speaking this sort of thing is a serious wound against the epistemic health of the community.
Does this apply to inclusion in a “Best Of” compilation? It’s not clear to me whether it does or does not. By compiling the list, we are saying: “here is the best work done on Less Wrong in [time period]”. But to whom are we saying this? To ourselves, so to speak? Is this for internal consumption—as a guideline for future work, collectively decided on, and meant to be considered as a standard or bar to meet, by us, and anyone who joins us in the future? Or, is this meant for external consumption—a way of saying to others, “see what we have accomplished, and be impressed”, and also “here are the fruits of our labors; take them and make use of them”? Or something else? Or some combination of the above?
What, in other words, is the purpose of compiling this list? (And it does no good, please note, to reply that “well, it’s to report the truth, isn’t it, since in fact there are some posts which are the best posts, and we had better be truthful about which ones they are!”. Out of many possible facts about the corpus of all material published on Less Wrong to date, we choose to report this particular fact—that as a result of such-and-such a procedure, meant to compile a list chosen ostensibly on the basis of such-and-such a supposed set of criteria, we have here the following set of such a number of posts… and so on, in all the particulars—that cannot be motivated merely by a generalized principle of “discern and report the truth”. There are too many bits of selection from among a myriad of possibilities!) Tell me the purpose, and I will say whether it is good or bad to exclude an author’s work on any given basis.
The “social legitimacy” argument is entirely based in “if we don’t hold to these epistemic standards, we are destroying our very purpose, i.e., truth-seeking”. The “inclusion in a ‘Best Of’ list” argument cannot be justified in this way.
I ended up deciding to reply to this over on my shortform. (I’d kinda prefer this meta conversation to happen somewhere other than this post, so that discussion on this post can focus on the merits of the OP)
The reply focuses directly on the “who is the target audience” question without getting into the broader questions here, which I agree are all important but require more careful nuance than I have bandwidth for at this moment.
Without disagreeing with anything you say in this comment, let me note that the question I was asking was a narrow one, concerning only the matter of whether ‘we’ (by which I took you to mean: “the Less Wrong community”) do, or do not, care about impressing (or, more generally, care about our reputation with) unspecified people, or groups thereof, outside said Less Wrong community, who lack certain epistemic skills or norms.
Now, if the answer to this question is a flat “No”, then we are done here and nothing more needs to be said; all my earlier comments (to which you allude) apply, all your comments also apply, and in general we know where we stand.
However, supposing that the answer is instead (a suitably qualified) “Yes”, then there’s a conversation to be had.
That narrow point having been made, here’s a tentative start to that possibly-necessary conversation (to be disregarded if the “No” option is taken).
Well, perhaps you are. As far as the “social legitimacy of objections in the comment section” goes, if we ban certain sorts of comments (along the lines discussed in the threads you linked), then we’ve crippled our own ability to have epistemically productive conversations, and generally speaking this sort of thing is a serious wound against the epistemic health of the community.
Does this apply to inclusion in a “Best Of” compilation? It’s not clear to me whether it does or does not. By compiling the list, we are saying: “here is the best work done on Less Wrong in [time period]”. But to whom are we saying this? To ourselves, so to speak? Is this for internal consumption—as a guideline for future work, collectively decided on, and meant to be considered as a standard or bar to meet, by us, and anyone who joins us in the future? Or, is this meant for external consumption—a way of saying to others, “see what we have accomplished, and be impressed”, and also “here are the fruits of our labors; take them and make use of them”? Or something else? Or some combination of the above?
What, in other words, is the purpose of compiling this list? (And it does no good, please note, to reply that “well, it’s to report the truth, isn’t it, since in fact there are some posts which are the best posts, and we had better be truthful about which ones they are!”. Out of many possible facts about the corpus of all material published on Less Wrong to date, we choose to report this particular fact—that as a result of such-and-such a procedure, meant to compile a list chosen ostensibly on the basis of such-and-such a supposed set of criteria, we have here the following set of such a number of posts… and so on, in all the particulars—that cannot be motivated merely by a generalized principle of “discern and report the truth”. There are too many bits of selection from among a myriad of possibilities!) Tell me the purpose, and I will say whether it is good or bad to exclude an author’s work on any given basis.
The “social legitimacy” argument is entirely based in “if we don’t hold to these epistemic standards, we are destroying our very purpose, i.e., truth-seeking”. The “inclusion in a ‘Best Of’ list” argument cannot be justified in this way.
I ended up deciding to reply to this over on my shortform. (I’d kinda prefer this meta conversation to happen somewhere other than this post, so that discussion on this post can focus on the merits of the OP)
The reply focuses directly on the “who is the target audience” question without getting into the broader questions here, which I agree are all important but require more careful nuance than I have bandwidth for at this moment.