Honestly I’m much more concerned about LessWrong staying as sane as it is. Overall I think there are several negative indications.
I agree. I always thought the “raising the sanity waterline” was a substitute for “refining the art of human rationality”, not a compliment. Imagine if the Logical Empiricists tried recruiting everyday people rather than the scientific elite (and other scientifically literate philosophers)? I fear that HPMOR, while I’ve gotten a lot of value from it, was the beginning of the end for this place. At the very least, I think these efforts should be spun off as much as possible (and without links leading back here). I say, let self-selection effects do their thing.
Is that a good thing? We can hardly raise the sanity waterline if only the most sane people hang out here.
Honestly I’m much more concerned about LessWrong staying as sane as it is. Overall I think there are several negative indications.
I agree. I always thought the “raising the sanity waterline” was a substitute for “refining the art of human rationality”, not a compliment. Imagine if the Logical Empiricists tried recruiting everyday people rather than the scientific elite (and other scientifically literate philosophers)? I fear that HPMOR, while I’ve gotten a lot of value from it, was the beginning of the end for this place. At the very least, I think these efforts should be spun off as much as possible (and without links leading back here). I say, let self-selection effects do their thing.
CFAR appears to be precisely this.
The think the more sane getting more sane raises the water line.
EDIT—Even I don’t know what the hell I was saying here.