Quick note re: “acclaimed”: Duncan had fairly largish number of posts highly upvoted during the 2021 Review. You might dispute whether that’s a noteworthy achievement, but, well, in terms of what content should be considered good on LessWrong, I don’t know of a more objective measure of “what the LessWrong community voted on as good, with lots of opportunity for people to argue that each other are mistaken.” (and, notably, Duncan’s posts show up in the top 50 and a couple in the top 20 whether you’re tracking votes from all users or just high karma ones)
(I suppose seeing posts actually cited outside the LessWrong community would be a better/more-objective measure of “something demonstrably good is happening, not potentially just circle-jerky”. I’m interested in tracking that although it seems trickier)
((Not intending to weigh in on any of the other points in this comment))
(I suppose seeing posts actually cited outside the LessWrong community would be a better/more-objective measure of “something demonstrably good is happening, not potentially just circle-jerky”. I’m interested in tracking that although it seems trickier)
In order from “slightly outside of LessWrong” to “very far outside of LessWrong,” I refactored the CFAR handbook against (mild) internal resistance from CFAR and it was received well, I semi-regularly get paid four or low-five figures to teach people rationality, I’ve been invited to speak at 4+ EA Globals and counting, my In Defense of Punch Bug essay has 1800 claps which definitely did not primarily come from this community, my Magic color wheel article has 18,800 claps and got a shoutout from CGPGrey, my sixth grade classroom was featured in a chapter in a book on modern education, and my documentary on parkour was translated by volunteers into like eight different languages and cited by the founder as his favorite parkour video of all time (at at least one moment in time). *shrug
Quick note re: “acclaimed”: Duncan had fairly largish number of posts highly upvoted during the 2021 Review. You might dispute whether that’s a noteworthy achievement, but, well, in terms of what content should be considered good on LessWrong, I don’t know of a more objective measure of “what the LessWrong community voted on as good, with lots of opportunity for people to argue that each other are mistaken.” (and, notably, Duncan’s posts show up in the top 50 and a couple in the top 20 whether you’re tracking votes from all users or just high karma ones)
(I suppose seeing posts actually cited outside the LessWrong community would be a better/more-objective measure of “something demonstrably good is happening, not potentially just circle-jerky”. I’m interested in tracking that although it seems trickier)
((Not intending to weigh in on any of the other points in this comment))
In order from “slightly outside of LessWrong” to “very far outside of LessWrong,” I refactored the CFAR handbook against (mild) internal resistance from CFAR and it was received well, I semi-regularly get paid four or low-five figures to teach people rationality, I’ve been invited to speak at 4+ EA Globals and counting, my In Defense of Punch Bug essay has 1800 claps which definitely did not primarily come from this community, my Magic color wheel article has 18,800 claps and got a shoutout from CGPGrey, my sixth grade classroom was featured in a chapter in a book on modern education, and my documentary on parkour was translated by volunteers into like eight different languages and cited by the founder as his favorite parkour video of all time (at at least one moment in time). *shrug