It also makes me think about an idea I’ve always had: Blog Buddies. Alice is a blogger who is interested in having a lot of discussion and constructive criticism on her posts. So is Bob. And Carol. And Dave. They can all get together, form a group, and read + critique each others posts. Seems like it scratches an itch. I’ve thought about it as a startup idea, but I could see it making sense more narrowly on LessWrong.
Yeah, this sounds like a book club, except where the participants are also the authors. I’ll bet that there are some groups of authors who do this already. Seems totally do-able. And I actually think that posts like this are exactly how you get this done.
This is part of why I’ve been posting a lot of questions lately—my stab at catalyzing conversation that people feel open to participating in. They’ve gotten a decent number of comments relative to the LW baseline. This feels like a solvable problem, though it probably has a few interlinked challenges (the intimidation factor, status concerns, building an expectation of continued discussion, and probably others too).
The fact is that we see a lot more idea posts than metaconversation posts on LW. By contrast, in my closest relationships, a huge proportion of the conversation is metaconversational. It’s about exploring the nuances of relationships and conversation challenges. Those conversations genuinely lead to baseline improvements and real progress. So it might be that we’re just straight-up neglecting something tractable that’s critical for generative conversation on LW to thrive.
What metaconversations have you experienced in your closest relationships and/or elsewhere that you think LessWrong would benefit from discussing?
How do you turn the metaconversations into actionable, implemented, and solved advice? Rather than such conversations well...becoming very navel gazing and meta circle jerk-y?
I imagine it’s much easier making such conversations bear fruit and pay rent in the context of close personal relationships because there should be a more visceral “this isn’t working” type of feeling fairly immediately, yes? Whereas in an online, usually loosely connected social environment I imagine the visceral and immediate feelings of “this doesn’t work” probably don’t arise as much, or at least not quickly. This is me speculating, what do you think?
I’ll second the “posting lots of questions” being more catalyzing and accessible feeling than regular posts. I still don’t comment too much nor write as much as I’d like, but whenever I see someone post a question post that seems to generate more discussion with people who’s names I don’t recognize than other types of posts. And seem more accessible.
Anecdote: I comment way more on metaconversation and community norms / culture types of posts than I do ideas focused and other kinds of posts. Not 100% certain why, might have to do with issues concerning people, group and community norms, culture, etc. feeling more accessible and interesting to me whereas pure ideas just...eh are less interesting to me usually. I like people a lot and seem to get more interested in something based on the impact that thing has on people. Probably is why I find X risks, AI Safety, and other such things to be very important and good and have read a good bit about such things, but whenever I try to dig into the weeds of the ideas and grok the technical idea aspects of those things...well that’s a lot less interesting to me. Anyway, this was an aside. Helpful to me though.
Adam Zerner’s recent question is a good example of a “this isn’t working” followed by analysis of the causes. Emotion is often a motivator for meta conversation in offline relationships. In online settings like LW, we might tend to start by imagining what sort of interactions we think are possible and missing, and then inferring the reason for their absence and experimenting with solutions.
Keeping those analyses general and succinct seems like the right way to go. I wouldn’t want to have a public discussion about my feelings about a specific other blogger. But trying to find explanations for general behavior online seems like world modeling, not navel gazing.
I agree re Adam’s question being a good example of the case, and not at all navel gazing.
My worry about navel gazing is motivated by some personal baggage, anxiety about what’s worth spending time on, and some anecdotal experiences where it seemed like metaconversations were not effective in doing anything and took a ton of time and energy, then nothing happened from them. Focusing on ”...trying to find explanations for general behavior online...” definitely is helpful world modeling that can provide useful insights and instigate changes in behavior in response to those insights.
I like how you only used the word meta conversation in your comment a single time and tabooed it otherwise, instead offering more specific and actionable commentary / insights about the issues of online discussions and how to align those with what people want out of the site + discussions.
Taking an Oath of Reply like you wrote is a good idea, and I’ll start doing that for my own posts or on discussions / comment threads too.
“In online settings like LW, we might tend to start by imagining what sort of interactions we think are possible and missing, and then inferring the reason for their absence and experimenting with solutions.”
This would make a really good question, if it hasn’t already been asked recently I’ll go make that post and reference this discussion, post, and other relevant things.
Yeah, this sounds like a book club, except where the participants are also the authors.
I like that analogy.
This is part of why I’ve been posting a lot of questions lately—my stab at catalyzing conversation that people feel open to participating in.
Yeah I like that idea.
The fact is that we see a lot more idea posts than metaconversation posts on LW. By contrast, in my closest relationships, a huge proportion of the conversation is metaconversational. It’s about exploring the nuances of relationships and conversation challenges. Those conversations genuinely lead to baseline improvements and real progress. So it might be that we’re just straight-up neglecting something tractable that’s critical for generative conversation on LW to thrive.
Huh, interesting. Drawing that connection to your social life makes it feel intuitive to me that we should be doing a lot more of it on LessWrong. Seems like a good topic for a follow up post.
By contrast, in my closest relationships, a huge proportion of the conversation is metaconversational.
Just curious, but if you don’t mind sharing, to what extent is this an exaggeration?
Not the clearest language, sorry. Slightly more specifically, I mean that a lot of the conversation is either about our own conversations, conversational dynamics generally, or conversation dynamics between ourselves and family/friends or between people we know and others.
I don’t have a confident number to put on it. Between 10-50% perhaps? Which feels huge to me.
Yeah, this sounds like a book club, except where the participants are also the authors. I’ll bet that there are some groups of authors who do this already. Seems totally do-able. And I actually think that posts like this are exactly how you get this done.
This is part of why I’ve been posting a lot of questions lately—my stab at catalyzing conversation that people feel open to participating in. They’ve gotten a decent number of comments relative to the LW baseline. This feels like a solvable problem, though it probably has a few interlinked challenges (the intimidation factor, status concerns, building an expectation of continued discussion, and probably others too).
The fact is that we see a lot more idea posts than metaconversation posts on LW. By contrast, in my closest relationships, a huge proportion of the conversation is metaconversational. It’s about exploring the nuances of relationships and conversation challenges. Those conversations genuinely lead to baseline improvements and real progress. So it might be that we’re just straight-up neglecting something tractable that’s critical for generative conversation on LW to thrive.
What metaconversations have you experienced in your closest relationships and/or elsewhere that you think LessWrong would benefit from discussing?
How do you turn the metaconversations into actionable, implemented, and solved advice? Rather than such conversations well...becoming very navel gazing and meta circle jerk-y?
I imagine it’s much easier making such conversations bear fruit and pay rent in the context of close personal relationships because there should be a more visceral “this isn’t working” type of feeling fairly immediately, yes? Whereas in an online, usually loosely connected social environment I imagine the visceral and immediate feelings of “this doesn’t work” probably don’t arise as much, or at least not quickly. This is me speculating, what do you think?
I’ll second the “posting lots of questions” being more catalyzing and accessible feeling than regular posts. I still don’t comment too much nor write as much as I’d like, but whenever I see someone post a question post that seems to generate more discussion with people who’s names I don’t recognize than other types of posts. And seem more accessible.
Anecdote: I comment way more on metaconversation and community norms / culture types of posts than I do ideas focused and other kinds of posts. Not 100% certain why, might have to do with issues concerning people, group and community norms, culture, etc. feeling more accessible and interesting to me whereas pure ideas just...eh are less interesting to me usually. I like people a lot and seem to get more interested in something based on the impact that thing has on people. Probably is why I find X risks, AI Safety, and other such things to be very important and good and have read a good bit about such things, but whenever I try to dig into the weeds of the ideas and grok the technical idea aspects of those things...well that’s a lot less interesting to me. Anyway, this was an aside. Helpful to me though.
Adam Zerner’s recent question is a good example of a “this isn’t working” followed by analysis of the causes. Emotion is often a motivator for meta conversation in offline relationships. In online settings like LW, we might tend to start by imagining what sort of interactions we think are possible and missing, and then inferring the reason for their absence and experimenting with solutions.
Keeping those analyses general and succinct seems like the right way to go. I wouldn’t want to have a public discussion about my feelings about a specific other blogger. But trying to find explanations for general behavior online seems like world modeling, not navel gazing.
I agree re Adam’s question being a good example of the case, and not at all navel gazing.
My worry about navel gazing is motivated by some personal baggage, anxiety about what’s worth spending time on, and some anecdotal experiences where it seemed like metaconversations were not effective in doing anything and took a ton of time and energy, then nothing happened from them. Focusing on ”...trying to find explanations for general behavior online...” definitely is helpful world modeling that can provide useful insights and instigate changes in behavior in response to those insights.
I like how you only used the word meta conversation in your comment a single time and tabooed it otherwise, instead offering more specific and actionable commentary / insights about the issues of online discussions and how to align those with what people want out of the site + discussions.
Taking an Oath of Reply like you wrote is a good idea, and I’ll start doing that for my own posts or on discussions / comment threads too.
“In online settings like LW, we might tend to start by imagining what sort of interactions we think are possible and missing, and then inferring the reason for their absence and experimenting with solutions.”
This would make a really good question, if it hasn’t already been asked recently I’ll go make that post and reference this discussion, post, and other relevant things.
I like that analogy.
Yeah I like that idea.
Huh, interesting. Drawing that connection to your social life makes it feel intuitive to me that we should be doing a lot more of it on LessWrong. Seems like a good topic for a follow up post.
Just curious, but if you don’t mind sharing, to what extent is this an exaggeration?
Not the clearest language, sorry. Slightly more specifically, I mean that a lot of the conversation is either about our own conversations, conversational dynamics generally, or conversation dynamics between ourselves and family/friends or between people we know and others.
I don’t have a confident number to put on it. Between 10-50% perhaps? Which feels huge to me.
I see, that makes sense. That 10-50% range does seem huge to me also, but I think it’s cool :)