So, there’s definitely a lot to engage with, here, and I don’t think I could do justice to all of what you say in a single comment (in particular, I have a lot to say about the “spam all your friends with stuff they might or might not be interested in” thing[1]). Some scattered thoughts follow, with possibly more to come later…
… I could buy a new fridge, and a new cabinet, and all my own vegetables, etc. But buying any individual one of these means it has to live in a different kitchen that doesn’t come with all the rest of my stuff. I have to buy all the things in order for any of them to be nearly as useful. Which is quite expensive.
So, in the world of your kitchen analogy, that does seem true. But in the real world, and talking about Facebook, it’s actually not true!
Here’s an example. Eliezer has, for some years now, been “blogging”, so to speak, on Facebook. This has always perplexed me. Oh, I can understand the sentiment of “access to all my friends” that you mention, sure. (I may disagree, but I understand the argument, even if I find it ultimately unconvincing.)
But that is an argument for posting things on Facebook, it is not an argument for hosting things on Facebook!
You see? Eliezer could have a blog! He could have a Wordpress blog (wordpress.com or self-hosted), or use any number of other blogging engines; and then, he could link or cross-post or “share” those blog posts on Facebook. (I trust I do not need to go over the technical, accessibility, openness, archival, control, and many other advantages of doing so.)
So here is a potential “move away from Facebook” that does not require a “different kitchen”, etc. It’s fully interoperable with the existing stuff; it offers great advantages; and it facilitates a future “total abandonment” of Facebook (for this purpose), if such should be desired—and just as easy a “return” to Facebook (for this purpose), if that should be desired.
So why not do this? What is the reason? It can’t be technical, or a matter of competence, or effort; it is utterly inconceivable that—even if Eliezer himself can’t find the time, or doesn’t know how, to set up a blog—he cannot find someone competent and willing to do this for him. (I’d do it for free, and so would any number of other people!)
What’s the obstacle?
And to be clear, even if we need a swiss army knife I think FB is quite subpar as a swiss army knife and someone should be making a better one
It’s worth thinking about this analogy a bit more.
Consider this, for example: when, and why, do people need Swiss army knives? Actual ones, I mean. Certainly not for everyday uses, like “chop your vegetables when making dinner every night”, etc. Victorinox clearly does not intend their products to replace chef’s knives, yes?
But—speaking, still, of actual Swiss army knives—people do buy them, and use them. They are genuinely useful tools. Just… not as replacements for the proper tools for any given job, when those are available, and can be used.
So perhaps it’s worth having, say, an ability to use Facebook to invite people to an event, or the ability to post “blog posts” on Facebook, if we expect to encounter situations where the proper tools for those jobs are unavailable, or we find ourselves unable to use them. On the other hand, it seems like a clearly bad idea to plan on using Facebook as the primary tool for very job, forever, even when far superior tools exist, and we are perfectly capable of using those proper tools—just as it would be foolish, when stocking your home kitchen, to skip buying a chef’s knife, on account of you already having your Swiss army knife.
[1] And not all of it is “that goal is actually bad”! (Only some of it.)
As I said in my earlier comment, even if you want the sort of thing Eliezer says he wants, that’s entirely insufficient reason to make the choice he made. One would also have to not want all of the many advantages of choosing otherwise (i.e., posting on not-Facebook).
Let me emphasize again: for Eliezer’s choice to make sense, it is not enough to want the things he said. Neither does it suffice to want them more strongly than you want the other stuff I talked about, because it is not a tradeoff—at least, not in the sense that we have to trade off desirable features or advantages of one system against those of another system. The only costs are the up-front cognitive costs of considering the alternatives.
In order for Eliezer’s choice to make sense, one of the following seems to need to be true:
He has to not care at all about any of the advantages of not using Facebook as a primary host for one’s content.
He has to not have given any thought to the matter.
I do not have sufficient information to discriminate between these two possibilities. But I will say that #1 reflects much, much more poorly on Eliezer’s character than #2 does—which is why I assumed the latter to be the true answer.
There’s one major reason a blog will never be strictly superior to facebook: the dropoff rate for people clicking through to read your blog is large. (For example, I generally do not click through to read blogposts while scanning facebook – I only read whatever quotes people include on FB itself, and this is quite common).
People are not enacting the algorithm “scan FB, then click through to things and read them.” People are enacting the algorithm “scan and comment on FB.” The trivial inconvenience is huge.
If I want to comment on Eliezer’s blog, it’s worse: I have to sign up on that blog. And I also don’t trust most people people to have clicked through to read the comments on that blog because I know most people are only reading comments on Facebook. This happens quite frequently with rationalist blogs: all the substantive discussion ends up happening on the corresponding FB post, not on the blog itself.
(It’ll be necessary to sign up on the blog, since Eliezer specifically wants to be able to block people easily)
It’s noteworthy that Eliezer has multiple other blogs (OvercomingBias, LessWrong, and his own yudwosky.net, and a tumblr). He uses FB. I think it’s quite unlikely this is because he accidentally ended up on FB.
There’s one additional important feature FB has that most other blogs do not: casual feel. the textbox for entering things is small, the fontsize is small, the font is sans-serif and simple, the site is cluttered so your post doesn’t look like the most important thing on the page. All of these translate into a strong signal of “this is low effort and is not to be judged as a high effort thing.”
This is extremely important – it means I can actually get things written that I wouldn’t otherwise write. It’s hard to do with a dedicated blogsite (there may be wordpress themes that produce this effect)
There’s one major reason a blog will never be strictly superior to facebook: the dropoff rate for people clicking through to read your blog is large.
Cross-posting full text eliminates this disadvantage.
If I want to comment on Eliezer’s blog, it’s worse: I have to sign up on that blog. … (It’ll be necessary to sign up on the blog, since Eliezer specifically wants to be able to block people easily)
This is not true. Simply set up Facebook login for the blog; set that as the only available login method; and then block whoever you want.
Even if it were true, I did not say it was necessary to enable commenting on the blog; let people comment on Facebook only, if you like.
This happens quite frequently with rationalist blogs: all the substantive discussion ends up happening on the corresponding FB post, not on the blog itself.
While I do think this is bad, it does nothing whatever to reduce the advantages of posting the content itself on the blog.
It is also possible (and not very difficult at all, though not turnkey) to enable Facebook comments associated with a Facebook-shared blog post to also appear under your blog—thus letting people who comment on your blog, also see comments that other people have posted on Facebook.
[Eliezer] uses FB. I think it’s quite unlikely this is because he accidentally ended up on FB.
I agree that it’s unlikely that Eliezer accidentally ended up on Facebook. But I think it’s quite a bit more likely that Eliezer thoughtlessly ended up on Facebook—because he did not think about the tradeoffs, because he did not care to consider the pros and cons, because he made no attempt to search for better solutions. (And because no one else knew or cared enough to point them out to him.)
There’s one additional important feature FB has that most other blogs do not: casual feel. The textbox for entering things is small, the fontsize is small, the font is sans-serif and simple, the site is cluttered so your post doesn’t look like the most important thing on the page. All of these translate into a strong signal of “this is low effort and is not to be judged as a high effort thing.”
I am very skeptical of this sort of claim, truth be told. It feels very much like a post-hoc, just-so-story, sort of explanation. I do not expect the majority of such claims to survive rigorous testing.
But even if we accept what you say here, it is obviously easy enough to duplicate that effect by selecting an appropriate theme/layout for a blog. Once again, Eliezer Yudkowsky, of all people, is uniquely positioned to call upon a great quantity of technical and design talent to create bespoke solutions for him, for problems of this nature.
So, there’s definitely a lot to engage with, here, and I don’t think I could do justice to all of what you say in a single comment (in particular, I have a lot to say about the “spam all your friends with stuff they might or might not be interested in” thing[1]). Some scattered thoughts follow, with possibly more to come later…
So, in the world of your kitchen analogy, that does seem true. But in the real world, and talking about Facebook, it’s actually not true!
Here’s an example. Eliezer has, for some years now, been “blogging”, so to speak, on Facebook. This has always perplexed me. Oh, I can understand the sentiment of “access to all my friends” that you mention, sure. (I may disagree, but I understand the argument, even if I find it ultimately unconvincing.)
But that is an argument for posting things on Facebook, it is not an argument for hosting things on Facebook!
You see? Eliezer could have a blog! He could have a Wordpress blog (wordpress.com or self-hosted), or use any number of other blogging engines; and then, he could link or cross-post or “share” those blog posts on Facebook. (I trust I do not need to go over the technical, accessibility, openness, archival, control, and many other advantages of doing so.)
So here is a potential “move away from Facebook” that does not require a “different kitchen”, etc. It’s fully interoperable with the existing stuff; it offers great advantages; and it facilitates a future “total abandonment” of Facebook (for this purpose), if such should be desired—and just as easy a “return” to Facebook (for this purpose), if that should be desired.
So why not do this? What is the reason? It can’t be technical, or a matter of competence, or effort; it is utterly inconceivable that—even if Eliezer himself can’t find the time, or doesn’t know how, to set up a blog—he cannot find someone competent and willing to do this for him. (I’d do it for free, and so would any number of other people!)
What’s the obstacle?
It’s worth thinking about this analogy a bit more.
Consider this, for example: when, and why, do people need Swiss army knives? Actual ones, I mean. Certainly not for everyday uses, like “chop your vegetables when making dinner every night”, etc. Victorinox clearly does not intend their products to replace chef’s knives, yes?
But—speaking, still, of actual Swiss army knives—people do buy them, and use them. They are genuinely useful tools. Just… not as replacements for the proper tools for any given job, when those are available, and can be used.
So perhaps it’s worth having, say, an ability to use Facebook to invite people to an event, or the ability to post “blog posts” on Facebook, if we expect to encounter situations where the proper tools for those jobs are unavailable, or we find ourselves unable to use them. On the other hand, it seems like a clearly bad idea to plan on using Facebook as the primary tool for very job, forever, even when far superior tools exist, and we are perfectly capable of using those proper tools—just as it would be foolish, when stocking your home kitchen, to skip buying a chef’s knife, on account of you already having your Swiss army knife.
[1] And not all of it is “that goal is actually bad”! (Only some of it.)
Eliezer has mentioned his reasons for moving to Facebook.
Having read said comment [working link], I stand behind my “thoughtlessly” hypothesis, which seems to have been entirely on-target.
Um, huh? That comments looks to me like the “Eliezer wants a very different thing than Said wants” hypothesis.
As I said in my earlier comment, even if you want the sort of thing Eliezer says he wants, that’s entirely insufficient reason to make the choice he made. One would also have to not want all of the many advantages of choosing otherwise (i.e., posting on not-Facebook).
Let me emphasize again: for Eliezer’s choice to make sense, it is not enough to want the things he said. Neither does it suffice to want them more strongly than you want the other stuff I talked about, because it is not a tradeoff—at least, not in the sense that we have to trade off desirable features or advantages of one system against those of another system. The only costs are the up-front cognitive costs of considering the alternatives.
In order for Eliezer’s choice to make sense, one of the following seems to need to be true:
He has to not care at all about any of the advantages of not using Facebook as a primary host for one’s content.
He has to not have given any thought to the matter.
I do not have sufficient information to discriminate between these two possibilities. But I will say that #1 reflects much, much more poorly on Eliezer’s character than #2 does—which is why I assumed the latter to be the true answer.
There’s one major reason a blog will never be strictly superior to facebook: the dropoff rate for people clicking through to read your blog is large. (For example, I generally do not click through to read blogposts while scanning facebook – I only read whatever quotes people include on FB itself, and this is quite common).
People are not enacting the algorithm “scan FB, then click through to things and read them.” People are enacting the algorithm “scan and comment on FB.” The trivial inconvenience is huge.
If I want to comment on Eliezer’s blog, it’s worse: I have to sign up on that blog. And I also don’t trust most people people to have clicked through to read the comments on that blog because I know most people are only reading comments on Facebook. This happens quite frequently with rationalist blogs: all the substantive discussion ends up happening on the corresponding FB post, not on the blog itself.
(It’ll be necessary to sign up on the blog, since Eliezer specifically wants to be able to block people easily)
It’s noteworthy that Eliezer has multiple other blogs (OvercomingBias, LessWrong, and his own yudwosky.net, and a tumblr). He uses FB. I think it’s quite unlikely this is because he accidentally ended up on FB.
There’s one additional important feature FB has that most other blogs do not: casual feel. the textbox for entering things is small, the fontsize is small, the font is sans-serif and simple, the site is cluttered so your post doesn’t look like the most important thing on the page. All of these translate into a strong signal of “this is low effort and is not to be judged as a high effort thing.”
This is extremely important – it means I can actually get things written that I wouldn’t otherwise write. It’s hard to do with a dedicated blogsite (there may be wordpress themes that produce this effect)
Cross-posting full text eliminates this disadvantage.
This is not true. Simply set up Facebook login for the blog; set that as the only available login method; and then block whoever you want.
Even if it were true, I did not say it was necessary to enable commenting on the blog; let people comment on Facebook only, if you like.
While I do think this is bad, it does nothing whatever to reduce the advantages of posting the content itself on the blog.
It is also possible (and not very difficult at all, though not turnkey) to enable Facebook comments associated with a Facebook-shared blog post to also appear under your blog—thus letting people who comment on your blog, also see comments that other people have posted on Facebook.
I agree that it’s unlikely that Eliezer accidentally ended up on Facebook. But I think it’s quite a bit more likely that Eliezer thoughtlessly ended up on Facebook—because he did not think about the tradeoffs, because he did not care to consider the pros and cons, because he made no attempt to search for better solutions. (And because no one else knew or cared enough to point them out to him.)
I am very skeptical of this sort of claim, truth be told. It feels very much like a post-hoc, just-so-story, sort of explanation. I do not expect the majority of such claims to survive rigorous testing.
But even if we accept what you say here, it is obviously easy enough to duplicate that effect by selecting an appropriate theme/layout for a blog. Once again, Eliezer Yudkowsky, of all people, is uniquely positioned to call upon a great quantity of technical and design talent to create bespoke solutions for him, for problems of this nature.