LW is more of AI Alignment forum now, but without mad science agent foundations spirit of earlier post-Sequences time. Probably capable of being alive because the field grew. So it’s not revived, it’s something new. Development of rationality mostly remains in the past, little significant discussion in recent years.
Yeah, I think some of this is true, but while there is a lot of AI content, I actually think that a lot of the same people would probably write non-AI content, and engage on non-AI content, if AI was less urgent, or the site had less existing AI content.
That counterfactual is hard to evaluate, but like, a lot of people who used to be core contributors to LW 1.0 are now also posting to LW 2.0, though they are now posting primarily on AI, and I think that’s evidence that it’s more that there has been a broader shift among LW users that AI is just like really urgent and important, instead of there having been a very different new user base that was discovered.
I kind of agree on development of rationality feeling kind of stagnant right now. I think there are still good posts being written, but a lot of cognitive energy is definitely going into AI stuff, more so than rationality stuff.
LW is more of AI Alignment forum now, but without mad science agent foundations spirit of earlier post-Sequences time. Probably capable of being alive because the field grew. So it’s not revived, it’s something new. Development of rationality mostly remains in the past, little significant discussion in recent years.
Yeah, I think some of this is true, but while there is a lot of AI content, I actually think that a lot of the same people would probably write non-AI content, and engage on non-AI content, if AI was less urgent, or the site had less existing AI content.
That counterfactual is hard to evaluate, but like, a lot of people who used to be core contributors to LW 1.0 are now also posting to LW 2.0, though they are now posting primarily on AI, and I think that’s evidence that it’s more that there has been a broader shift among LW users that AI is just like really urgent and important, instead of there having been a very different new user base that was discovered.
I kind of agree on development of rationality feeling kind of stagnant right now. I think there are still good posts being written, but a lot of cognitive energy is definitely going into AI stuff, more so than rationality stuff.
I would love to be able to stop worrying about AI and go back to improving rationality. Yet another thing to look forward to once we leap this hurdle.