I’m still scared of posting on here because it’s the first discussion forum where I have known myself to be intellectually outclassed.
I have found that some of the time you can make up for a (perceived) lack of intellect with a little work, and this is true (from my own experience) here on LessWrong: when about to comment on an issue, it pays big dividends to use the search feature to check for something related in previous posts with which you can refine, change, or bolster your position. Of the many times I have done it, twice I caught myself in grievous and totally embarrassing errors!
For what it’s worth, commenting on LW is so far from normal conversation and normal internet use that most intellects haven’t developed methods for it; they have to grind through mostly the same processes as everyone else—and nobody can actually tell if it took you five seconds or five minutes to type your reply. My own replies might be left in the comment box for hours, to be reread with a fresh mind later and changed entirely.
For what it’s worth, commenting on LW is so far from normal conversation and normal internet use that most intellects haven’t developed methods for it
This is interesting—LW seems to be pretty natural for me. I think the only way my posting here is different from anywhere else is that my sentences might be more complex.
On the other hand, once I had a choice, I’ve spent most of my social life in sf fandom, where the way I write isn’t wildly abnormal, I think.
Anyone who’s reading this, do you think what’s wanted at LW is very different from what’s wanted in other venues?
Anyone who’s reading this, do you think what’s wanted at LW is very different from what’s wanted in other venues?
Yes. I get the sense that here you are expected to at least try for rigor.
In other venues—it’s totally ok to randomly riff on a topic without actually having thought deeply about either the consequences, or whether or not there’s any probability of your idea actually having any basis in reality.
LW is substantially higher-level than most (all?) forums that I’ve been to, including private ones and real name only ones. The standard of discourse just seems better here in general.
Wow, that is interesting … conditional on more people feeling this way (LW is natural), I might just have focused my intellect on rhetoric and nonreasonable convincing to the point that following LW’s guidelines is difficult, and then committed the typical mind fallacy and assumed everyone had too.
Actually, I’ve come to notice that rhetoric and other so-called Dark Arts are still worth their weight in gold on LW, except when the harder subjects (math and logic) are at hand.
But LessWrong commenters definitely have plenty of psychological levers, and the demographic uniformity only makes them more effective. For a simple example, I guesstimate that, in just about any comment, a passing mention of how smart LessWrongers are is worth on average 3 or 4 extra karma points—and this is about as old as tricks can get.
Anyone who’s reading this, do you think what’s wanted at LW is very different from what’s wanted in other venues?
I haven’t noticed, but this is the first online community I’ve belonged to. I’m used to writing fiction, which may affect the way I post here, but if it does I don’t notice it affecting it. Commenting feels natural. I don’t try to make my sentences complex; if anything, I try to make them as simple as they can be to still convey my point. And at the very least, my comments and posts aren’t drastically downvoted.
LW feels fairly normal to me as well. It is different than my experience of (most) other forums, but that’s because I adjust myself to be more explicit on other forums about things that I feel should be taken for granted, including all of common sense data, a materialistic worldview, and minor inferential steps. This lets me get to the point rather easily here without having to worry (as much) about being misunderstood.
Are you talking about the level of rationality, about the expected level (or types) of knowledge, or the grammar and sentence structure?
For obvious reasons, the level of rationality expected here is far higher than (AFAIK) anywhere else on the internet.
The expected knowledge at LW...is probably middling to above average for me. More relevantly, much more knowledge of science, and in particular the sciences that contribute to rationality (or, more realistically, the ones touched on in the sequences), which tend to be fairly ‘hard’. I’ve found a much higher knowledge of, e.g. history, classical philosophy, politics/political science, and other ‘softer’ disciplines is expected elsewhere.
As for grammar, I’d say that LW is middling to below average, though this may be availability bias: LW is much larger than most of the other internet communities I belong to, so it could have a higher number of errors while still having a better average level of grammar.
The expected knowledge at LW...is probably middling to above average for me. More relevantly, much more knowledge of science, and in particular the sciences that contribute to rationality (or, more realistically, the ones touched on in the sequences), which tend to be fairly ‘hard’. I’ve found a much higher knowledge of, e.g. history, classical philosophy, politics/political science, and other ‘softer’ disciplines is expected elsewhere.
I presume you are averaging over a high-sophistication sample of the internet, not the internet at large.
This is the first forum on the Internet I’ve been a member of, but the standards of rigor and precision of language expected here are the same as the ones my friends and I expect in our conversations.
I have found that some of the time you can make up for a (perceived) lack of intellect with a little work, and this is true (from my own experience) here on LessWrong: when about to comment on an issue, it pays big dividends to use the search feature to check for something related in previous posts with which you can refine, change, or bolster your position. Of the many times I have done it, twice I caught myself in grievous and totally embarrassing errors!
For what it’s worth, commenting on LW is so far from normal conversation and normal internet use that most intellects haven’t developed methods for it; they have to grind through mostly the same processes as everyone else—and nobody can actually tell if it took you five seconds or five minutes to type your reply. My own replies might be left in the comment box for hours, to be reread with a fresh mind later and changed entirely.
tl;dr Don’t be afraid to comment!
This is interesting—LW seems to be pretty natural for me. I think the only way my posting here is different from anywhere else is that my sentences might be more complex.
On the other hand, once I had a choice, I’ve spent most of my social life in sf fandom, where the way I write isn’t wildly abnormal, I think.
Anyone who’s reading this, do you think what’s wanted at LW is very different from what’s wanted in other venues?
I find writing on LW pretty ‘normal’, on par with some other forums or blog comments (though with possibly less background hostility and flamewars).
I suspect the ban on discussing politics does more to increase the quality of discourse here than the posts on cognitive bias.
Yes. I get the sense that here you are expected to at least try for rigor.
In other venues—it’s totally ok to randomly riff on a topic without actually having thought deeply about either the consequences, or whether or not there’s any probability of your idea actually having any basis in reality.
LW is substantially higher-level than most (all?) forums that I’ve been to, including private ones and real name only ones. The standard of discourse just seems better here in general.
Wow, that is interesting … conditional on more people feeling this way (LW is natural), I might just have focused my intellect on rhetoric and nonreasonable convincing to the point that following LW’s guidelines is difficult, and then committed the typical mind fallacy and assumed everyone had too.
Actually, I’ve come to notice that rhetoric and other so-called Dark Arts are still worth their weight in gold on LW, except when the harder subjects (math and logic) are at hand.
But LessWrong commenters definitely have plenty of psychological levers, and the demographic uniformity only makes them more effective. For a simple example, I guesstimate that, in just about any comment, a passing mention of how smart LessWrongers are is worth on average 3 or 4 extra karma points—and this is about as old as tricks can get.
But LessWrongers are really smart.
That is a true but banal observation that shouldn’t be worth karma. Of course, so was this response. And so forth.
Of course, LessWrongers are smarter than most people, but what’s really striking is the willingness to update. And the modesty.
Yup, our only flaw is modesty.
I’ve noticed that karma points accrue for witty quips too.
I haven’t noticed, but this is the first online community I’ve belonged to. I’m used to writing fiction, which may affect the way I post here, but if it does I don’t notice it affecting it. Commenting feels natural. I don’t try to make my sentences complex; if anything, I try to make them as simple as they can be to still convey my point. And at the very least, my comments and posts aren’t drastically downvoted.
LW feels fairly normal to me as well. It is different than my experience of (most) other forums, but that’s because I adjust myself to be more explicit on other forums about things that I feel should be taken for granted, including all of common sense data, a materialistic worldview, and minor inferential steps. This lets me get to the point rather easily here without having to worry (as much) about being misunderstood.
Are you talking about the level of rationality, about the expected level (or types) of knowledge, or the grammar and sentence structure?
For obvious reasons, the level of rationality expected here is far higher than (AFAIK) anywhere else on the internet.
The expected knowledge at LW...is probably middling to above average for me. More relevantly, much more knowledge of science, and in particular the sciences that contribute to rationality (or, more realistically, the ones touched on in the sequences), which tend to be fairly ‘hard’. I’ve found a much higher knowledge of, e.g. history, classical philosophy, politics/political science, and other ‘softer’ disciplines is expected elsewhere.
As for grammar, I’d say that LW is middling to below average, though this may be availability bias: LW is much larger than most of the other internet communities I belong to, so it could have a higher number of errors while still having a better average level of grammar.
YouTube, from it’s size, probably has comments closer to “average”.
I presume you are averaging over a high-sophistication sample of the internet, not the internet at large.
This is the first forum on the Internet I’ve been a member of, but the standards of rigor and precision of language expected here are the same as the ones my friends and I expect in our conversations.