The article makes good points as far as it goes, but I think there is something it underemphasises: leadership. Great works do not happen because a crowd of people think it would be a good idea, even if they establish common knowledge of their agreement. Coordinating the crowd is not the obstacle. Great things happen because one person, or a small group of them, have the vision and motivation to make them happen, and attract more and more people to what they are doing.
Anyway, something better than Facebook for the rationalist community already exists. You are looking at it. LessWrong 1.0 was created by one person with a vision, who drew others to it. But it slowly ran down after he considered his work there completed and moved on. LessWrong 2.0 was created (I believe, but I don’t know the details) by a small group who again had the vision and motivation to make something happen.
If Facebook is the question, surely LessWrong is the answer?
It’s important to note that there are some goals Facebook is currently trying to achieve, which LW2.0 is not currently trying to achieve. It might be able to answer them someday, but we’re currently trying to do one-thing-well and that thing is notably different from FB.
LW is currently trying to be a conversational-locus for intellectual discussion and progress with good epistemic standards. There are places where this trades off with against a social hub for hanging out, and a place for social coordination. Some of this is just because it’s hard to do a lot of things at once and we haven’t put the effort into being a good social hub. Some of it is because maintaining high epistemic standards is real hard, and doing it while also being the place to resolve social drama is even harder.
The article makes good points as far as it goes, but I think there is something it underemphasises: leadership. Great works do not happen because a crowd of people think it would be a good idea, even if they establish common knowledge of their agreement. Coordinating the crowd is not the obstacle. Great things happen because one person, or a small group of them, have the vision and motivation to make them happen, and attract more and more people to what they are doing.
Anyway, something better than Facebook for the rationalist community already exists. You are looking at it. LessWrong 1.0 was created by one person with a vision, who drew others to it. But it slowly ran down after he considered his work there completed and moved on. LessWrong 2.0 was created (I believe, but I don’t know the details) by a small group who again had the vision and motivation to make something happen.
If Facebook is the question, surely LessWrong is the answer?
It’s important to note that there are some goals Facebook is currently trying to achieve, which LW2.0 is not currently trying to achieve. It might be able to answer them someday, but we’re currently trying to do one-thing-well and that thing is notably different from FB.
LW is currently trying to be a conversational-locus for intellectual discussion and progress with good epistemic standards. There are places where this trades off with against a social hub for hanging out, and a place for social coordination. Some of this is just because it’s hard to do a lot of things at once and we haven’t put the effort into being a good social hub. Some of it is because maintaining high epistemic standards is real hard, and doing it while also being the place to resolve social drama is even harder.