Of course it could still be a good idea to rewrite the home page, since maybe the sort of people who would be attracted to a site with LW’s current home page have on the whole negative value for LW.
Well since the front page is so generic, it might attract people who react positively to the mere idea of “rationality comminity” who are more likely to be people like stereotypical Objectivists and entry-level atheism fans, as opposed to the kinds of critical and savvy people that LW would need to prove itself to by eg. showing them some awesome posts from the archives and not expecting them to be excited merely about the idea of a site about rationality.
Yes, yes! I mentioned the same thing in a different comment and I’m glad to finally see that someone else gets it. (: Other people probably see this also, but it seems most are not really interested in analyzing how new people are reacting to the front page and about page and how it affects who does and does not join. Thanks, Yli. I’ll definitely be interested in hearing any other theories you may have.
I’m happy you see where I’m coming from. Another opinion I have about issues like this is that to fix them, it wouldn’t be enough to read complaints in comments in threads like this one and try to fix things you find people complaining about. You would actually need to find a person (or persons) with a good eye for and intuitions about these things, who has good taste and who knows what they’re doing, and just let them take control of the whole design and let them change it at their discretion. I think there must be a few people on LW who would be both capable and willing to do it, though of course the site as it currently is would repel them.
I feel capable of doing the intuition part because I’m a psychology enthusiast and have done a lot of free coaching and emotional support, so I’m good at intuiting things about people’s feelings. It’s a matter of knowing what these guys care about the most. Without a feel for their culture, I won’t be able to target people who already have the same culture—this is true—but since this site is creating it’s own culture, that’s not the objective. Finding people compatible to the culture, since it’s a rationalist culture, isn’t quite the right problem to solve either. Firstly, these guys seem to want NEW information, not just hear the same old stuff—they’re not looking for people perfectly following their conventions, conforming to a stereotype, the way that most cultures do—that would be boring. Secondly, it’s a culture of rationalists. A true rationalist wants to be proven wrong and to change in the event that their ideas weren’t as good as somebody else’s. So what we’re looking at here is not the challenge of “Find more people with the exact same ideas.” but the challenge of “Find people who can contribute to this culture.”
Of course there is a fine line to draw when making the distinction between those who contribute to the culture and those who do not. The most important way to make the distinction seems to be “don’t subject us to tedium”. I theorize that boredom is the brain’s way of punishing you for not constantly learning, which gives one a survival advantage since we live in a world where even one small spot of ignorance can cause a problem, yet we can’t know everything. The only solution is: learn constantly. So, it’s no wonder humans experience boredom whenever they’re idle or doing something far too easy.
Depending on one’s intelligence level, one might be fully immersed by the human world at all times, because it’s designed to put people at that level into a state of flow, or they may be totally left out and experience flow very rarely. I think a lot of people here are the type that have to seek out flow experiences and are subjected to too much tedium elsewhere. The last thing they want is to be stuck reading the same stuff over and over, or explaining old ideas to new people. Their brains punish them for that, and they get too much of that type of punishment as it is.
So, because they’re rationalists who know better than to assume that just because somebody disagrees, they’re automatically wrong, and because they’re hungry for new information, and won’t be able to tolerate more of the same stuff all the time, I think the best way to go with this is not to attempt to attract people that match the details of the culture, but to attempt to attract people that match the root of the culture.
The root is caring about using good reasoning as one of your top priorities.
Do you think it might be possible to make Less Wrong more interactive? There are a lot of simple rationality tests which most people get wrong; like the classic tests used for Confirmation Bias or The Conjunction Fallacy.
Could we make fun versions of such tests for people to try out, perhaps with animation, etc? With a little work, we could even come up with little games that test Bayesian reasoning skills.
This would select for active, interested people who like to try things out, and if we quickly explained mistakes as soon as people made them, the idea that “I, too, am irrational” would be much more salient.
Rationality is a skill we have to practice, in the end, not just a thing we read about.
(I apologize if this would be too hard to implement to be worth it; I have very little programming experience.)
I’ve been thinking about this for a little while. This is a really, really good idea. It’s not too hard to implement. I feel there are some other things to do first (prevent endless September for instance) but other than that I think it’s a great idea and it’s just a matter of constructing these with the right questions. Questions have to be worded very carefully, and tests constructed cautiously, in order to have the scientific properties that give test results their accuracy. On the other hand, fun internet quizzes can bring in users and do not necessarily need to be scientifically sound (though for this site in particular, I’d figure that wording even a fun quiz as scientifically as possible would be the way to go, as that would attract more like minded people and gain more respect). It would actually take a lot more time to think of all the questions, consider how scientific the series of tests was, and word all the questions correctly than to set up a script that allows you to take the tests.
At least to begin with, we don’t have to come up with things on our own. There’s a whole literature of psychological studies we can comb through to recreate. The Sequences cite a whole lot of iconic studies, and a sufficiently motivated person could dig up more obscure follow-ups, too.
Converting them into a format that would work on the Internet is a bit trickier, but a lot can be done with Java applets.
The first page I linked to shows a Confirmation Bias test designed by a LWer, based on the classic experiment. The Conjunction Fallacy has a simple written multiple choice test.
Anchoring and adjustment could be tested for by providing people with high or low random numbers and asking them to answer a bunch of estimation questions, like the “How many countries in Africa?” test. It would work out best if we already had people take this test and had gathered data to show people upon completion.
Of course it could still be a good idea to rewrite the home page, since maybe the sort of people who would be attracted to a site with LW’s current home page have on the whole negative value for LW.
Why is it attracting the wrong ones, yli? I have a vague sense that you might be right, so I’m very curious about your reasoning.
Well since the front page is so generic, it might attract people who react positively to the mere idea of “rationality comminity” who are more likely to be people like stereotypical Objectivists and entry-level atheism fans, as opposed to the kinds of critical and savvy people that LW would need to prove itself to by eg. showing them some awesome posts from the archives and not expecting them to be excited merely about the idea of a site about rationality.
Yes, yes! I mentioned the same thing in a different comment and I’m glad to finally see that someone else gets it. (: Other people probably see this also, but it seems most are not really interested in analyzing how new people are reacting to the front page and about page and how it affects who does and does not join. Thanks, Yli. I’ll definitely be interested in hearing any other theories you may have.
I’m happy you see where I’m coming from. Another opinion I have about issues like this is that to fix them, it wouldn’t be enough to read complaints in comments in threads like this one and try to fix things you find people complaining about. You would actually need to find a person (or persons) with a good eye for and intuitions about these things, who has good taste and who knows what they’re doing, and just let them take control of the whole design and let them change it at their discretion. I think there must be a few people on LW who would be both capable and willing to do it, though of course the site as it currently is would repel them.
I feel capable of doing the intuition part because I’m a psychology enthusiast and have done a lot of free coaching and emotional support, so I’m good at intuiting things about people’s feelings. It’s a matter of knowing what these guys care about the most. Without a feel for their culture, I won’t be able to target people who already have the same culture—this is true—but since this site is creating it’s own culture, that’s not the objective. Finding people compatible to the culture, since it’s a rationalist culture, isn’t quite the right problem to solve either. Firstly, these guys seem to want NEW information, not just hear the same old stuff—they’re not looking for people perfectly following their conventions, conforming to a stereotype, the way that most cultures do—that would be boring. Secondly, it’s a culture of rationalists. A true rationalist wants to be proven wrong and to change in the event that their ideas weren’t as good as somebody else’s. So what we’re looking at here is not the challenge of “Find more people with the exact same ideas.” but the challenge of “Find people who can contribute to this culture.”
Of course there is a fine line to draw when making the distinction between those who contribute to the culture and those who do not. The most important way to make the distinction seems to be “don’t subject us to tedium”. I theorize that boredom is the brain’s way of punishing you for not constantly learning, which gives one a survival advantage since we live in a world where even one small spot of ignorance can cause a problem, yet we can’t know everything. The only solution is: learn constantly. So, it’s no wonder humans experience boredom whenever they’re idle or doing something far too easy.
Depending on one’s intelligence level, one might be fully immersed by the human world at all times, because it’s designed to put people at that level into a state of flow, or they may be totally left out and experience flow very rarely. I think a lot of people here are the type that have to seek out flow experiences and are subjected to too much tedium elsewhere. The last thing they want is to be stuck reading the same stuff over and over, or explaining old ideas to new people. Their brains punish them for that, and they get too much of that type of punishment as it is.
So, because they’re rationalists who know better than to assume that just because somebody disagrees, they’re automatically wrong, and because they’re hungry for new information, and won’t be able to tolerate more of the same stuff all the time, I think the best way to go with this is not to attempt to attract people that match the details of the culture, but to attempt to attract people that match the root of the culture.
The root is caring about using good reasoning as one of your top priorities.
What do you think about that?
Do you think it might be possible to make Less Wrong more interactive? There are a lot of simple rationality tests which most people get wrong; like the classic tests used for Confirmation Bias or The Conjunction Fallacy.
Could we make fun versions of such tests for people to try out, perhaps with animation, etc? With a little work, we could even come up with little games that test Bayesian reasoning skills.
This would select for active, interested people who like to try things out, and if we quickly explained mistakes as soon as people made them, the idea that “I, too, am irrational” would be much more salient.
Rationality is a skill we have to practice, in the end, not just a thing we read about.
(I apologize if this would be too hard to implement to be worth it; I have very little programming experience.)
I’ve been thinking about this for a little while. This is a really, really good idea. It’s not too hard to implement. I feel there are some other things to do first (prevent endless September for instance) but other than that I think it’s a great idea and it’s just a matter of constructing these with the right questions. Questions have to be worded very carefully, and tests constructed cautiously, in order to have the scientific properties that give test results their accuracy. On the other hand, fun internet quizzes can bring in users and do not necessarily need to be scientifically sound (though for this site in particular, I’d figure that wording even a fun quiz as scientifically as possible would be the way to go, as that would attract more like minded people and gain more respect). It would actually take a lot more time to think of all the questions, consider how scientific the series of tests was, and word all the questions correctly than to set up a script that allows you to take the tests.
At least to begin with, we don’t have to come up with things on our own. There’s a whole literature of psychological studies we can comb through to recreate. The Sequences cite a whole lot of iconic studies, and a sufficiently motivated person could dig up more obscure follow-ups, too.
Converting them into a format that would work on the Internet is a bit trickier, but a lot can be done with Java applets.
Ooh… But what about copyrights? And if they are copyright expired, would they be any good? Maybe. Hmm.
Do you have suggestions for specific materials we could start with?
The first page I linked to shows a Confirmation Bias test designed by a LWer, based on the classic experiment. The Conjunction Fallacy has a simple written multiple choice test.
Anchoring and adjustment could be tested for by providing people with high or low random numbers and asking them to answer a bunch of estimation questions, like the “How many countries in Africa?” test. It would work out best if we already had people take this test and had gathered data to show people upon completion.