I say all this despite agreeing with Said’s pessimism about the quality of most LW content. I just don’t think there’s any realistic world in which commenting pessimistically on lots of stuff in the way that Said does actually helps with that, but it does hurt the few good things.
You know, I’ve seen this sort of characterization of my commenting activity quite a few times in these discussions, and I’ve mostly shrugged it off; but (with apologies, as I don’t mean to single you out, and indeed you’re one of the LW members whom I respect significantly more than average) I think at this point I have to take the time to address it.
My objection is simply this:
Is it actually true that I “comment pessimistically on lots of stuff”? Do I do this more than other people?
There are many ways of operationalizing that, of course. Here’s one that seems reasonable to me: let’s find all the posts (not counting “meta”-type posts that are already about me, or referring to me, or having to do with moderation norms that affect me, etc.) on which I’ve commented “pessimistically” in, let’s say, the last six months, and see if my comments are, in their level of “pessimism”, distinguishable from those of other commenters there; and also what the results of those comments turn out to be.
Multiple people commenting in similarly “pessimistic” ways, including me. The most, shall we say, vigorous, discussion that takes place there doesn’t involve me at all.
My overall view is certainly critical, but here I write multiple medium-length comments, which contain substantive analyses of the concept being discussed. (There is, however, a very brief comment from someone else which is just a request—or “demand”?—for clarification; such is given, without protest.)
Probably the most central example of the sort of “short questions that are potentially critical” comments that some people here seem to so dislike. Note that the two comments I posted were (a) both answered (satisfactorily or not, you can judge for yourself, though I found the answers reasonable enough, given the context), and (b) answered by two different people—the OP and someone else. This is exactly the sort of entirely reasonable and praiseworthy outcome which I’ve described!
Notable because here I am responding to someone else (one of the LW/Lightcone team, in fact) posting a fairly harsh criticial comment, with some comments in support of the OP’s thesis.
This is a reply to a comment, not a post, but still “pessimistic” (i.e., mildly, or even just potentially, skeptical). A brief, but quite reasonable, discussion ensues.
Probably the most “pessimistic” comment of the bunch, but noteworthy in that here I’m not even starting a comment thread, but only agreeing with someone else’s existing critical comment.
A couple of critical comments from me, among many others. Nothing particularly stands out. Nothing exciting or terrible results from them.
That’s it, all the way back to around the end of January. (Feel free to go back further and check if I’ve omitted anything, but I think this is a reasonable block of time to examine.)
The bottom line, I think, is that it’s just not true that I stand out from the crowd in terms of how “pessimistically” I comment, or on how much stuff, or how often, or how often relative to other sorts of comments (where, e.g., I give my own thoughts on something in detail), or how often anything meaningfully bad happens as a result, or… anything, really.
From now on, whenever anyone claims otherwise, I’m just going to ask for proof.
Wei Dai had a comment below about how important it is to know whether there’s any criticism or not, but mostly I don’t care about this either because my prior is just that it’s bad whether or not there’s criticism. In other words, I think the only good approach here is to focus on farming the rare good stuff and ignoring the bad stuff (except for the stuff that ends up way overrated, like (IMO) Babble or Simulators, which I think should be called out directly).
So, your view is that that most content here is just bad, and some of it is so bad, while being highly acclaimed (what does that say about Less Wrong’s “epistemic immune system”!), that it needs to be called out directly. I think that’s a more pessimistic view than even my own!
But then what exactly is the concern? Are you suggesting that I’ve misguidedly criticized some of the good stuff? If so—what stuff are we talking about, here?
Not responding to the main claim, cos mods have way more context on this than me, will defer to them.
think that’s a more pessimistic view than even my own!
Very plausibly. But pessimism itself isn’t bad, the question is whether it’s the sort of pessimism that leads to better content or the sort that leads to worse content. Where, again, I’m going to defer to mods since they’ve aggregated much more data on how your commenting patterns affect people’s posting patterns.
You know, I’ve seen this sort of characterization of my commenting activity quite a few times in these discussions, and I’ve mostly shrugged it off; but (with apologies, as I don’t mean to single you out, and indeed you’re one of the LW members whom I respect significantly more than average) I think at this point I have to take the time to address it.
My objection is simply this:
Is it actually true that I “comment pessimistically on lots of stuff”? Do I do this more than other people?
There are many ways of operationalizing that, of course. Here’s one that seems reasonable to me: let’s find all the posts (not counting “meta”-type posts that are already about me, or referring to me, or having to do with moderation norms that affect me, etc.) on which I’ve commented “pessimistically” in, let’s say, the last six months, and see if my comments are, in their level of “pessimism”, distinguishable from those of other commenters there; and also what the results of those comments turn out to be.
#1: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Hsix7D2rHyumLAAys/run-posts-by-orgs
Multiple people commenting in similarly “pessimistic” ways, including me. The most, shall we say, vigorous, discussion that takes place there doesn’t involve me at all.
#2: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2yWnNxEPuLnujxKiW/tabooing-frame-control
My overall view is certainly critical, but here I write multiple medium-length comments, which contain substantive analyses of the concept being discussed. (There is, however, a very brief comment from someone else which is just a request—or “demand”?—for clarification; such is given, without protest.)
#3: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/67NrgoFKCWmnG3afd/you-ll-never-persuade-people-like-that
Here I post what can be said to be a critical comment, but one that offers my own take. Other comments are substantially more critical than mine.
#4: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y4hN7SkTwnKPNCPx5/why-don-t-more-people-talk-about-ecological-psychology#JcADzrnoJjhFHWE5W
Probably the most central example of the sort of “short questions that are potentially critical” comments that some people here seem to so dislike. Note that the two comments I posted were (a) both answered (satisfactorily or not, you can judge for yourself, though I found the answers reasonable enough, given the context), and (b) answered by two different people—the OP and someone else. This is exactly the sort of entirely reasonable and praiseworthy outcome which I’ve described!
#5: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCuzmCsE86BTu9PfA/there-are-no-coherence-theorems#bGBy9uYdZrGcpvXCG
Notable because here I am responding to someone else (one of the LW/Lightcone team, in fact) posting a fairly harsh criticial comment, with some comments in support of the OP’s thesis.
#6: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/C6oNRFt4dvtM25vpw/living-nomadically-my-80-20-guide#Zs9T4CebjkLvsmvDy
This is a reply to a comment, not a post, but still “pessimistic” (i.e., mildly, or even just potentially, skeptical). A brief, but quite reasonable, discussion ensues.
#7: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yepKvM5rsvbpix75G/you-don-t-exist-duncan
Probably the most “pessimistic” comment of the bunch, but noteworthy in that here I’m not even starting a comment thread, but only agreeing with someone else’s existing critical comment.
#8: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rwkkcgSpnAyE8oNo3/alexander-and-yudkowsky-on-agi-goals
A couple of critical comments from me, among many others. Nothing particularly stands out. Nothing exciting or terrible results from them.
That’s it, all the way back to around the end of January. (Feel free to go back further and check if I’ve omitted anything, but I think this is a reasonable block of time to examine.)
The bottom line, I think, is that it’s just not true that I stand out from the crowd in terms of how “pessimistically” I comment, or on how much stuff, or how often, or how often relative to other sorts of comments (where, e.g., I give my own thoughts on something in detail), or how often anything meaningfully bad happens as a result, or… anything, really.
From now on, whenever anyone claims otherwise, I’m just going to ask for proof.
So, your view is that that most content here is just bad, and some of it is so bad, while being highly acclaimed (what does that say about Less Wrong’s “epistemic immune system”!), that it needs to be called out directly. I think that’s a more pessimistic view than even my own!
But then what exactly is the concern? Are you suggesting that I’ve misguidedly criticized some of the good stuff? If so—what stuff are we talking about, here?
Not responding to the main claim, cos mods have way more context on this than me, will defer to them.
Very plausibly. But pessimism itself isn’t bad, the question is whether it’s the sort of pessimism that leads to better content or the sort that leads to worse content. Where, again, I’m going to defer to mods since they’ve aggregated much more data on how your commenting patterns affect people’s posting patterns.