In part, that’s why several of my suggestions depended on a small number of relatively concrete observables (like distinguishing inference from observation).
But also, I think that a substantial driver of the lack of consensus/spread of opinion lies in the fact that the population of LessWrong today, in my best estimation, contains a lot of people who “ought not to be here,” not in the sense that they’re bad or wrong or anything, but in the sense that a gym ought mostly only contain people interested in doing physical activity and a library ought mostly only contain people interested in looking at books. There is some number of non-central or non-bought-in members that a given population can sustain, and right now I think LessWrong is holding more than it can handle.
I think a tighter population would still lack consensus in the way you highlight, but less so.
FWIW, I’m someone who believes myself to have the occasional useful contribution on LW, but I also have an intuitive sense of being “dangerously non-central” here, with the first word of that expanding to something like “likely to be welcomed anyway, but in a way which would do more collateral damage to community alignment (via dilution) than is broadly recognized in a way that people are willing to act on”. I apply a significant amount of secondary self-restraint on those grounds to what I post, possibly not enough (though my thoughts about what an actually appropriate strategy would be to apply here are too muddled to say that with confidence), and my emotional sense endorses my use of this restraint (in particular, it doesn’t cause noticeable feelings of hostility or rejection in either direction).
I’m saying this out loud partly in case anyone else who’s had similar first-person experiences would otherwise feel awkward about describing them here and therefore result in a cluster of evidence being missing; I don’t know how large that group would be.
I agree that the consensus doesn’t exist.
In part, that’s why several of my suggestions depended on a small number of relatively concrete observables (like distinguishing inference from observation).
But also, I think that a substantial driver of the lack of consensus/spread of opinion lies in the fact that the population of LessWrong today, in my best estimation, contains a lot of people who “ought not to be here,” not in the sense that they’re bad or wrong or anything, but in the sense that a gym ought mostly only contain people interested in doing physical activity and a library ought mostly only contain people interested in looking at books. There is some number of non-central or non-bought-in members that a given population can sustain, and right now I think LessWrong is holding more than it can handle.
I think a tighter population would still lack consensus in the way you highlight, but less so.
FWIW, I’m someone who believes myself to have the occasional useful contribution on LW, but I also have an intuitive sense of being “dangerously non-central” here, with the first word of that expanding to something like “likely to be welcomed anyway, but in a way which would do more collateral damage to community alignment (via dilution) than is broadly recognized in a way that people are willing to act on”. I apply a significant amount of secondary self-restraint on those grounds to what I post, possibly not enough (though my thoughts about what an actually appropriate strategy would be to apply here are too muddled to say that with confidence), and my emotional sense endorses my use of this restraint (in particular, it doesn’t cause noticeable feelings of hostility or rejection in either direction).
I’m saying this out loud partly in case anyone else who’s had similar first-person experiences would otherwise feel awkward about describing them here and therefore result in a cluster of evidence being missing; I don’t know how large that group would be.