Honestly, my maginal returns of spending time on LW dropped drastically since I finished reading the sequences. Attending local meetups was kinda fun to meet some like-minded people, but they inevitably were far behind in the sequences and for the most part always struck me as trying to identify as a rationalist rather than trying to become more rationalist. This strikes me as the crux of the issue: LW has become (slash might have always been) an attractor of nerd social status, which is fine if that’s its stated goal, though this doesn’t seem to be the issue.
Additionally, in the 5 years I’ve been attending meetups (at least six different ones in three different countries), I’ve noticed a drastic increase in the levels of weirdness happening, to the extent that I find myself discouraged from attending and having to deal with these people. This is the point I think Witness was trying to express below, perhaps not in so many words, but I find myself explicitly not liking a lot of the people/memes now associated with LW. This is not good.
I do, however, think a place for cultivating rationality is important to have, and to that end I would suggest using Github as the platform. Having some sort of rationality repository (preferably without the LW label), where people can open pull requests for things they’re thinking about/working on solving. As an added bonus, you get the ability to track how ideas change over time, can easily fork differing opinions, and get all of the cool things a commit history would do for you. I think having some sort of rationality platform is important, but personally I would do away with the LW culture, keep our identities small, and individually go on our way.
LessWrong has had its time and its place, but its lingering death is probably something we should pay a lot of attention to. As a community experiment, I think the results speak for themselves.
Honestly, my maginal returns of spending time on LW dropped drastically since I finished reading the sequences. Attending local meetups was kinda fun to meet some like-minded people, but they inevitably were far behind in the sequences and for the most part always struck me as trying to identify as a rationalist rather than trying to become more rationalist. This strikes me as the crux of the issue: LW has become (slash might have always been) an attractor of nerd social status, which is fine if that’s its stated goal, though this doesn’t seem to be the issue.
Additionally, in the 5 years I’ve been attending meetups (at least six different ones in three different countries), I’ve noticed a drastic increase in the levels of weirdness happening, to the extent that I find myself discouraged from attending and having to deal with these people. This is the point I think Witness was trying to express below, perhaps not in so many words, but I find myself explicitly not liking a lot of the people/memes now associated with LW. This is not good.
I do, however, think a place for cultivating rationality is important to have, and to that end I would suggest using Github as the platform. Having some sort of rationality repository (preferably without the LW label), where people can open pull requests for things they’re thinking about/working on solving. As an added bonus, you get the ability to track how ideas change over time, can easily fork differing opinions, and get all of the cool things a commit history would do for you. I think having some sort of rationality platform is important, but personally I would do away with the LW culture, keep our identities small, and individually go on our way.
LessWrong has had its time and its place, but its lingering death is probably something we should pay a lot of attention to. As a community experiment, I think the results speak for themselves.
My $0.02.