No, not really. I just want to enjoy reading this forum, and your posts interfere with this enjoyment, probably because your ego/skills ratio is too high, at least in my opinion. You are clearly intelligent enough to produce quality contributions (maybe not as good as Yvain’s, but few here can match him). Unfortunately, your inflated estimate of how good you are gets in the way. Plus your combative style could use some improvement.
That explains your behavior. The way it looks to me is that I don’t predict this audience very well at all. I admit, I’m lost when it comes to figuring out how to present to you guys. I don’t think the problem is my ego. Mostly because I can admit that I can’t figure out in advance how LessWrong is going to react. I’ll keep your criticisms in mind. Thanks again, Shminux.
P.S. I don’t know who downvoted you but I liked that you were being so honest, so I put you back up to zero.
I don’t think the problem is my ego. Mostly because I can admit that I can’t figure out in advance how LessWrong is going to react.
Of the 6 posts you’ve submitted so far, 5 were meta-discussion, and 4 were calls to change Less Wrong. My hunch is that the overall response you’re seeing is mostly determined by that. Try sticking to writing only about substantial issues for a while.
Okay. That’s a good point. Though I’d like to ask you to take a moment to understand where I’m coming from:
I find LessWrong, and go “A clearing of sanity in this jungle of irrationality? Great!” I see that the clearing of sanity wants to improve it’s website in John’s proposed rewrites thread. (I thought he had been chosen to do this task but evidently, he just up and started a thread.)
As a web professional who knows things about web marketing, I could see that if LW wants to grow, they’re doing it wrong. I say so in John’s thread. This doesn’t get anywhere, so I make a chart, and I post about it.
I discovered a comment that I found upsetting about “keeping out the intellectual riff-raff” and told Luke about it. I mention in an email that “my ethics do not allow me to do work for an organization that allows elitism.” I assumed he did not want LessWrong to have a reputation for “elitism” (regardless of how it’s defined internally, the external world will most likely think it looks bad) so I figured he’d do something about it.
Now I’m in a pickle. I do not want to destroy the nice clearing of sanity by deluging it in newbies, but I have volunteered to help it grow. Being a responsible person, I can neither forget the volunteer offer or just risk destroying the culture without even thinking it through. Instead of giving up, I think of solutions to the problem and invite the group to criticize these and share their wisdom with me in my Preventing “endless September” discussion.
My concerns are complex and they won’t fit in a comment, and people had been interested in criticizing my ideas so far, so I make a new thread, a call for agreement. Bad idea if you go by the popularity of that, but I’ve noted to self that people prefer to have few to no meta threads and hopefully, my original reasons are understandable.
A bunch more people express that they’re in favor of “elitism” most notably in a comment with over 20 upvotes: “LessWrong is elitist:” … “I wish LessWrong was more elitist!”. Though it’s still not clear what they mean, I find the amount of “elitism” talk to be rather alarming, because calling one’s self or group “elitist” makes a very bad impression, even if you guys are all wonderful people. But for all I know, the 20+ people that upvoted that comment interpreted it in the worst possible sense of the word and really did mean to express that they’re jerks, and may have not even stopped to consider whether the original commenter didn’t mean it that way before pressing the upvote button.
At this point, two new obstacles to me helping LessWrong grow appear: One, helping LessWrong grow in order to be seen as “elitist” by the world will only smear their public reputation. This would hurt the site and make the parent organization look bad. Two, if LessWrong really is “elitist” in the nasty sense of the word, I have to refuse to help them for ethical reasons.
The people here are describing themselves and each other in public as “elitist”. But some of them use their real names on the forum. This is the internet where what you say might last forever. Yet here they are smearing themselves and each other, the LessWrong website, and the Singularity Institute (by association), as “elitist”.
Nobody seems to think that this is a bad idea but me. The clearing of sanity in a jungle has begun to look too much like the jungle itself to me. At this point, it’s either try to explain it to them or revoke my offer to volunteer and leave the site. I figure “These guys care about rationality, right? How hard can it be? I’ll explain my view and we’ll probably come to a nice sensible agreement of some kind.”
That attempt (this thread) didn’t go over too well, for reasons that still aren’t completely clear to me due to the large number of completely different criticisms. Few have responded to the topic itself, so I don’t really know whether people agree or disagree. Some people think they speak for the group, but I have never seen that work out on LessWrong—so far, those I’ve seen speaking for the group have been verifiably incorrect. So I made a poll. Where I am at right now is that even though some (Schminux, Mitchell_Porter) seem to think I have potential to be a good writer here, I am so terribly put off by the way people are smearing themselves as elitists that if it doesn’t get resolved somehow, I’m more likely to throw up than ever write you guys an article.
I either have to try to resolve my concerns about the “elitism” talk, or go do something better with my time than stay here being smeared as an “elitist” with the rest of you.
If anyone can suggest a resolution to this problem, I’m more than willing to hear it.
The word “elitism” is vague and affect-laden. In order to have a productive conversation about the set of topics that the label “elitism” vaguely points towards, it is necessary to set aside that term and get into specifics, rather than letting the conversation revolve around the word “elitism”.
Before you started posting on Less Wrong, the word “elitism” (and its variants) rarely appeared on the website. You introduced the word to the conversation (e.g., here), and you have used it again and again (over a hundred times, according to your comment history). That is why some people have expressed their opinions in terms of the word “elitism” (where their opinion, roughly, is that they want Less Wrong to have high quality content). So if you just want people to stop using the word “elitism”, you should be able to accomplish that (for the most part) by not using the word “elitism.”
You let yourself get sidetracked from your goal of growing Less Wrong and decided to lead a largely irrelevant side conversation centered on the word “elitism” (what it means, whether it applies to Less Wrong, whether people might get the impression that it applies to Less Wrong, etc.). This discussion has been unproductive and lengthy, and you didn’t heed the signals to stop taking the conversation in that direction (which included downvotes, comments about how you should proceed differently, and the obvious lack of progress towards your goal).
If you weren’t offering to do work to help the site, I’d second Morendil’s suggestion that you stick to object-level conversations, at least for a while. Maybe once you’ve spent some more time here and gotten a better feel for the site and its users you could re-engage in meta-level conversations about improving Less Wrong. That still might be the best option in the actual situation.
Another potential option for moving forward is for you to focus on more concrete questions about improving the site which draw more directly on your web marketing expertise. Is there a standard menu of options that web marketing professionals use to help a site grow? Do some of those options stand a better chance of maintaining the site’s quality, or can they be tailored to do so? Are there proven techniques for preventing a drop in quality in the face of growth? If your company does this sort of thing, what kinds of conversations do you have with organizations to try to figure out how to increase their web presence in a way that’s consistent with their goals? You’re the one who has been leading this effort to improve the site; figure out how to lead it in a more productive direction. (And be aware that many Less Wrongers are losing their patience with you, or have already lost it. So don’t waste whatever attention you can get).
I don’t think you understand the very bad reaction I had to elitism. I feel that it is very important not to contribute to elitism (by some definitions like this one, which are not the same as the more popular interpretations here from what I can tell, though I didn’t know that before) and that it is also very important to avoid being judged as an elitist (by that definition). I feel so strongly about this that I wanted to quit. According to my poll, 20% have the same strong feelings I do.
Based on the fact that you didn’t seem to realize I was willing to quit over this and didn’t see further interaction as worthwhile unless it was determined that most people here do not support elitism (by the particular definition), I would have to guess that you have a radically different idea of what elitism is from the definition that I was using.
I have realized that I need to learn a lot more about other people’s ideas of elitism. This is an important topic to me. Would you be interested in explaining your ideas about elitism?
Instead of giving up, I think of solutions to the problem
This, perhaps, is where you missed an opportunity to apply a lesson from the Sequences. There is no urgency to solving the problem, the urgent task is to understand it, and it is this task that requires time.
You might also have missed subtle cues that you were violating tacit norms of behaviour, for instance when Luke said “we could debate in this comment thread” and you ignored that in favor of making a new post.
The clearing of sanity in a jungle has begun to look too much like the jungle itself to me.
This stands out a bit from the rest of your comment: it suggests you are idealizing the community, rather than acknowledging the consequences of its being made up of human beings equipped with standard issue human brains.
The reason I suggest you write about substantive topics is that this will give you more of a chance to get acculturated into the thinking tools that are the cause of your perceiving this as “a clearing of sanity in a jungle”.
Even for the most acculturated among this community, best performance consists of applying some of these thinking tools some of the time, somewhat competently. Rationality remains the exception rather than the rule—this is implied in the very name “Less Wrong”.
If anyone can suggest a resolution to this problem, I’m more than willing to hear it.
Play a round of Rationalist Taboo for yourself (i.e. don’t try to second-guess what anyone else means by that term) on “elitist”. Spell out what it is exactly that your ethics does not allow you to support or be seen as supporting. Approach this question lightly, with an open mind and no bottom line already filled in. Now relate this specific question to the way this community approaches ethical questions—you do not have to agree with the community, but you have to grasp what the approach is.
Are you willing to do the above?
If you can steer clear of any meta-discussion (including even allusions to meta topics), this could even be good material for a post.
I don’t know why I didn’t realize that I needed to understand this better before I jumped in. I was ignorant of my own ignorance. Sometimes when you don’t realize you’re missing a piece of information, there is nothing to warn you. Other times, I see that things are going to be complex. (Which is why I took the time to think it out and wrote something like ten pages on different solutions to Eternal September and their consequences). I also do that at work—I clarify what the purpose of the project is before I code it. For some reason, that little flag was missing here. Now I get to try and guess why.
I think you’re right that I don’t pick up on hints enough. I really don’t get why people hint. That seems dysfunctional to me. I wish they’d just be clear.
idealizing the community
The problem isn’t that I idealized the community, the problem is … how do I explain this. I am extremely prone to a particular bias. I know I have it, I just don’t know the word for it. I give people too much credit. It’s something I do over and over again. Not sure how to stop it. I seem to need to learn about each group’s flaws individually.
a chance to get acculturated into the thinking tools
I started challenging my ideas and using logic at 17, and I’ve been pretty hard core about it since then. I’m already using a lot of the thinking tools. Apparently I still am not perfect. I feel like I really needed to be part of a group of people capable of pointing out my flaws and giving me ideas I would not have thought of. I am so grateful for this. I will have a chance to find any unseen problems now.
Rationality remains the exception rather than the rule—this is implied in the very name “Less Wrong”.
Thank you for that. I feel better about not being perfect. (: Still going to aim for perfection though. (:
Play a round of Rationalist Taboo
I decided to take your and Alicorn’s suggestion on this. At first I didn’t know what that meant but I have since found the correct reading materials.
If you can steer clear of any meta-discussion (including even allusions to meta topics), this could even be good material for a post.
I would love to do that. I’ve been thinking that if I can learn enough about the political sides that seem to be triggered here, I can transcend thinking inside that dichotomy, and perhaps show others how to do the same. That’s my thought on how to present it. Do you have anything to suggest in addition?
I don’t speak for all of Less Wrong here, but spending two years at Cambridge has already primed me to have an instinctive tribal urge to attack anyone who attacks elitism, because they tend to be Guardian comment section class warfare types, aka “the other side”. It is a mindkill topic for me, so it’s probably a mindkill topic for a lot of people here. It might even be a mindkill topic for you, I don’t know. But it does mean you need to tread really carefully when you talk about it. There’s a reason I need to consciously shrug off Guardian articles, and make myself not read through 10 pages of comments that will make me angry.
Guardian commenters are at least the more intelligent face of “the other side”; I understand there are many more people in both the US and the UK who share those views but are much less eloquent about them.
The way you use the word “smear” is telling my System 1 that you are on “the other side”, which makes it hard to sympathise with you at all. In fact I can physically feel the indignant mindkill response rising in myself right now, so I’m going to stop talking, but I hope I’ve made my point.
I can physically feel the indignant mindkill response rising in myself right now
I admire how you’ve identified your reaction as a mindkill response. I don’t know whether this is a mindkill topic for me. I am not even sure that we disagree. I care specifically that people do not abuse or take advantage of each other verbally or otherwise, that people should not feel owed something by strangers, and that people should not make excuses to dominate one another. Class and intellect are not excuses for any of these things to me. Aside from those specifics, I don’t feel any tenacious urges to rend anyone’s ideas asunder.
Are we in agreement about this?
Because I have barely read any of the writing by “Guardian comment section class warfare types” I have very little idea what these two sides are like. Your post brings me into an awareness of the fact that there are groups of people who identify as “elitists”. Other than one specific (Mensa, which I view as a place where people who are lonely due to the differences that giftedness causes go to meet kindred spirits, and where people who are suffering from boredom go to alleviate ennui because they have a greater need for a challenge) and a vague sense that there must be overbearing jerks somewhere who call themselves elitists (I’ve met a few abusive intellectuals and I figure they must form groups somewhere) I was not aware that any groups actually identified as “elitists” or would want to defend that.
I have observed though, that mentioning intelligence differences is likely to trigger anger and the word “elitism” appears during those times.
I hate this reaction, so I try to be careful with phrasing.
I admire how you’ve identified your reaction as a mindkill response.
It’s not that hard. If you feel adrenaline/indignance/anger at a Less Wrong comment and/or a compulsive urge to reply then the prior should be that you’ve been mindkilled, since when one takes the outside view people on LW tend to be a pretty reasonable bunch.
Are we in agreement about this?
I am in agreement with your points as I interpret their statement. I am not sure my interpretation of the statements agrees with yours. For example, what do you mean by “not make excuses to dominate one another”? There are many situations (governments, chain-of-command in workplaces, employers) where people can legitimately dominate one another, if that’s what you mean by dominate.
Because I have barely read any of the writing by “Guardian comment section class warfare types” …
Would you mind explaining these two sides?
Sure. I’ll PM you, since I don’t think a detailed description of British politics is very relevant. :)
The point that is relevant is that I’m not defending what you’re calling elitism, nor do I frequently call myself elitist, I’m just opposing people who oppose elitism, since when they use that word the definition tends to include me.
What I meant was just that it’s pleasant to see that someone else was doing that. I didn’t expect it. I know I’m capable of doing that, too. I am beginning to wonder about my response to the elitism thing. I’m asking myself questions like “Would I have responded differently if I was not upset?” and “If so, why did I let being upset influence my reaction to this specifically, when I know I can prevent it from influencing me on other things?”
The point that is relevant is that I’m not defending what you’re calling elitism, nor do I frequently call myself elitist, I’m just opposing people who oppose elitism, since when they use that word the definition tends to include me.
Oh. I didn’t think of the possibility of you being lumped into that outside of your control.
That’s a good point and makes the situation more complex.
Back to the “two sides”—I don’t really want to be on one side or the other. I want to understand both. There’s got to be a way for both sides to get along with each other. It’s a problem worth solving. Do you think a lot of LessWrongers would agree with these statements, or do you think they’re too entrenched in mindkill?
There’s no such thing as “the other side”. There are a variety of arguments for anti-intellectualism, some of which may be more compelling than others.
I meant “the other side” in a blue vs green sense, hence the link. I didn’t claim it was a well-defined political stance, merely that perceived membership of it provoked a reaction in my system 1 and that fact was probably worth pointing out.
ETA: While the first half of the article you linked was interesting and informative, the rest of it plus the comments was precisely a demonstration of the kind of rhetoric that happens when people are motivated by what I referred to as “mindkill”. This time it’s surrounding the word “intellectual” rather than “elitism”, but my point still stands.
The people here are describing themselves and each other in public as “elitist”. But some of them use their real names on the forum. This is the internet where what you say might last forever. Yet here they are smearing themselves and each other, the LessWrong website, and the Singularity Institute (by association), as “elitist”.
I’m quite surprised by your use of “smear”. I’m aware that “elitist” has negative connotations, but not nearly as bad as “sexist” or “racist”.
To clarify the connotations you’re seeing, would you agree that MIT is “elitist”? Do you think saying that is a slur?
I consider LessWrong to be “elitist” in the same way that MIT is—if anything, LessWrong is much less elitist than mainstream academia.
Neither LessWrong not MIT would use “elitist” in their self-description, but both would answer “yes” if asked whether they are elitist.
Thanks for theorizing that—my situation was different from the situation most of you guys probably had growing up, I was disadvantaged. That might be the cause for the differing viewpoints. I have realized I’m pretty ignorant about other points of view on elitism. Care to explain yours? I want to understand them.
I probably internalized something like this growing up:
There are people who are really good at something,
this is a good thing,
I’m not one of them,
but if I work very hard I could be.
I haven’t been very aware of social class issues or using ‘elitism’ as an actual term. So my quick association with someone calling out elitism as a bad thing is that they’re saying that people shouldn’t try to be very good at anything. People who grew up more social class aware might have quite different instant associations.
Hmm. That’s interesting. What’s interesting is that I relate with you completely about knowing that there are people who are good at things and wanting to work to become one, and not seeing anything wrong with it. I even want to defend the right to work to become good at things.
I did not attend MIT but I am really curious about other people’s ideas about elitism and I realize now that I was ignorant about them before. Would you mind explaining your ideas on elitism please?
I don’t really have well thought-out ideas on elitism, but I think there are places like MIT that have high standards that everybody accepts as normal, and I’m not sure of what distinguishes situations where the high standards are accepted, and situations where those standards would give rise to accusations of “elitism”.
Overall I don’t consider “elitism” a very useful word because it’s vague and can describe many different things: “my group has more qualities than other groups”, “you should grand me special respect just because of this group I belong to”, “some people are more skilled or more gifted than others”, etc. - add to that a general negative connotation, and it seems like a multi-purpose boo light, along with “fascist”, “anti-American”, “defeatist”, “terrorist”, “cult”, “fanatic”, etc.
(have you read the sequence on words? It’s very relevant here, especially the bit on sneaking in connotations )
By the way, in the line of emotive conjugations like (from various sources)
I am firm; you are obstinate; he is a pig-headed fool. I am righteously indignant; you are annoyed; he is making a fuss over nothing. I have reconsidered the matter; you have changed your mind; he has gone back on his word. I am sparkling; you are unusually talkative; he is drunk. I know my own mind; you like things to be just so; they have to have everything their way. I am outspoken; you are blunt; he is rude. I am creative; you are quirky; he is crazy. I stay up to date; you procrastinate with blogs; he should get a life.
… you could add
I have high standards; you are elitist; he is arrogant.
Debating over whether “elitist” is the right word or not doesn’t seem much more useful than it does in those other cases.
The word “elitist” has political connotations. It is often used in right wing political discourse as a slur against liberals. For example the phrase “intellectual elite” is used a great deal in this article defending Sarah Palin. Some of these upvotes may be made by people who interpret “do you think elitism is bad” as asking “Do you hate university professors and would you vote for Sarah Palin?”
Thank you for pointing this out. I don’t bother with politics, (I quit being interested a long time ago when I realized that nothing was being solved and no one was looking for solutions that would get to the root of the problem because they seemed to prefer squabbling) so I didn’t know that.
I see now that it’s something I really need to learn more about if I want to understand elitism better. And I do. Would you mind explaining more or, if you know of good reading materials, direct me?
it’s something I really need to learn more about if I want to understand elitism better. And I do.
I think it’s more useful to first better understand the reasons for wanting to understand “elitism” better. (I expect you are wrong in believing that it’s a project worth working on.)
I bring up the political connotations because I don’t think Less Wrong is particularly snobbish or exclusionary, and I think there are more flattering reasons why someone might choose to label themselves as “elitist”.
Personally, I think the word “elitist” is too politically charged and emotionally laden to be of much use.
There are a few different questions that the word lumps in together, I outline them below and my opinion of them.
Question 1. Should this site be hostile towards new members? (No)
Question 2. Should this site praise intelligence and rationality? (Yes)
Question 3. What privileges should those regarded as particularly rational receive? (No formal privileges)
Question 4. How concerned should we be with trying to preserve the current culture? (Somewhat, but not to the extent of making people feel small)
It’s interesting that “elitist” doesn’t strike me as being politically charged—I would even be hard-pressed to tell whether it seems more left-wing or right-wing (if it wasn’t for your comment, I’d tend to call it slightly right-wing).
Maybe it’s because elitism vs. anti-intellectualism isn’t as much of a hot political issue here in France; maybe French people (or French politicians?) are less hung-up about seeming elitist than people in lesser countries.
This article seems to indicate a clear cultural difference between at least France and the US on the issue of elitism.
Wow that’s interesting. Thank you for the article. Do the French find it horrible when intelligent people end up on the wrong educational tier? What is thought about those who are unhappy because they’re brighter than their tier allows them to be?
Eh, I don’t know enough to answer you with much confidence on that, sorry.
There are some significant differences between the French and American educational sytems: we have the bac, a national standardized exam everybody takes at the end of high school, and getting a good grade at that can open a lot of doors, so is often a “way out” for a smart kid in a bad environment. Also, there are many good colleges with nearly free education, so French students typically graduate with waaay less debt than American ones, and you don’t often hear of people who cut their education short because they were poor. Socialism: it works, bitches :D (disclaimer: I don’t identify as a socialist and don’t want to start a flame war, I just like poking fun at Americans).
Also, from what I’ve heard of Americans, I got the impression that smart kids would feel “held back” because the system cared more about not preventing the dumb kids from being left behind than about stimulating the smart kids, resulting in some smart kids getting bored out of their minds. I think that’s less of a concern in France, it seems to be more of an American thing.
Overall I have a pretty low opinion of the American system, and concerns about my kid’s education is one reason why I am reticent to move to the US (despite all the things that the US does better than France). And I get the impression that concerns of “elitism” may be partly behind the low quality of the American system.
But then, I haven’t researched the topic in much depth (prior to this conversation, I wasn’t aware that “elitism” sounded all that bad to Americans); it would be interesting to look at the British system, that is probably a bit closer to the French system than to the American one. The Chinese system is probably even more extreme than the French one, and Chinese people coming to France have a bit of the same reaction that I have when hearing about the American system—those people are crazy and lazy!
This post is currently tied for eighth most downvoted of all time (-22), while your original post on growing LW is tied for 25th most upvoted post of all time (+49). If you could figure out how to induce those responses at will, you could play us like a yoyo. :-)
As far as I can tell, you’re trying to use standard arguments and appeals to emotion and group membership. LWers, as a general rule, come here because it’s a community that mostly ignores those appeals. LW is one of very few places I’ve come across where this is the case.
In general, the most effective thing I think you could do to improve your posts and comments would be to use more specific claims and back them up with specific evidence. You’re doing a great job of creating outlines before you post, and with translating your ideas into simple language (really, we do appreciate that). You could work a bit on being concise: there’s no need to write an essay just to ask if we should have more areas than just Discussion and Main.
Another, specific thing relating to this post: taboo “elitist” and all synonyms. You already started to reduce elitism to the parts that were bad, and I think you could benefit by going a bit further with that thread.
Finally, we kind of do have a third level: the biweekly open threads. This probably belongs there.
My intent was to say, basically “We look really bad, let’s not look bad” which, I realize, is different from a scientifically provable or mathematically verifiable point, but it’s interesting you went so far as to interpret this as “appeals to emotion”. Maybe you meant something else was wrong with it?
I am working on being concise, thanks for the suggestion.
I did work out what I mean by “elitism” that’s here.
Also, I’ve decided to investigate what other people mean by elitism. Do you care to explain your point of view?
In this case, it’s easy to predict how LessWrong is going to react. Your initial posts were well-received because you pointed out a potential problem, LW’s high bounce rate, and even created some nice graphs. But when a consensus started to emerge that reducing the bounce rate would actually be a net negative, instead of accepting this or refuting it, you made a long series of posts mostly reiterating the same unconvincing points. Doing that will result in a poor reception.
Weird that you interpreted it that way. I thought I was working on solving the problem. This post would be an exception. I had a mind kill reaction surrounding “elitism” and, like 20% of the people who took my poll, was trying to decide whether or not I should quit LessWrong.
How did you end up with the perspective that I was wasting time reiterating unconvincing points?
No, not really. I just want to enjoy reading this forum, and your posts interfere with this enjoyment, probably because your ego/skills ratio is too high, at least in my opinion. You are clearly intelligent enough to produce quality contributions (maybe not as good as Yvain’s, but few here can match him). Unfortunately, your inflated estimate of how good you are gets in the way. Plus your combative style could use some improvement.
ego/skills ratio is a huge problem on LW, imo. Founder bias, perhaps.
That explains your behavior. The way it looks to me is that I don’t predict this audience very well at all. I admit, I’m lost when it comes to figuring out how to present to you guys. I don’t think the problem is my ego. Mostly because I can admit that I can’t figure out in advance how LessWrong is going to react. I’ll keep your criticisms in mind. Thanks again, Shminux.
P.S. I don’t know who downvoted you but I liked that you were being so honest, so I put you back up to zero.
Of the 6 posts you’ve submitted so far, 5 were meta-discussion, and 4 were calls to change Less Wrong. My hunch is that the overall response you’re seeing is mostly determined by that. Try sticking to writing only about substantial issues for a while.
Okay. That’s a good point. Though I’d like to ask you to take a moment to understand where I’m coming from:
I find LessWrong, and go “A clearing of sanity in this jungle of irrationality? Great!” I see that the clearing of sanity wants to improve it’s website in John’s proposed rewrites thread. (I thought he had been chosen to do this task but evidently, he just up and started a thread.)
As a web professional who knows things about web marketing, I could see that if LW wants to grow, they’re doing it wrong. I say so in John’s thread. This doesn’t get anywhere, so I make a chart, and I post about it.
This becomes one of the top 30 discussions of all time. I volunteer to help LessWrong grow, and I’m given access to the LessWrong Google Analytics account.
A bunch of people commented with concerns about how growth could destroy the culture in the discussions, including a link to the wiki on the Eternal September phenomenon.
I discovered a comment that I found upsetting about “keeping out the intellectual riff-raff” and told Luke about it. I mention in an email that “my ethics do not allow me to do work for an organization that allows elitism.” I assumed he did not want LessWrong to have a reputation for “elitism” (regardless of how it’s defined internally, the external world will most likely think it looks bad) so I figured he’d do something about it.
Now I’m in a pickle. I do not want to destroy the nice clearing of sanity by deluging it in newbies, but I have volunteered to help it grow. Being a responsible person, I can neither forget the volunteer offer or just risk destroying the culture without even thinking it through. Instead of giving up, I think of solutions to the problem and invite the group to criticize these and share their wisdom with me in my Preventing “endless September” discussion.
Luke says he’s not very worried about endless September even though Eliezer is definitely worried about discussion quality and a whole bunch of people posted concerns, but he invites me to discuss it because he might change his mind.
My concerns are complex and they won’t fit in a comment, and people had been interested in criticizing my ideas so far, so I make a new thread, a call for agreement. Bad idea if you go by the popularity of that, but I’ve noted to self that people prefer to have few to no meta threads and hopefully, my original reasons are understandable.
A bunch more people express that they’re in favor of “elitism” most notably in a comment with over 20 upvotes: “LessWrong is elitist:” … “I wish LessWrong was more elitist!”. Though it’s still not clear what they mean, I find the amount of “elitism” talk to be rather alarming, because calling one’s self or group “elitist” makes a very bad impression, even if you guys are all wonderful people. But for all I know, the 20+ people that upvoted that comment interpreted it in the worst possible sense of the word and really did mean to express that they’re jerks, and may have not even stopped to consider whether the original commenter didn’t mean it that way before pressing the upvote button.
At this point, two new obstacles to me helping LessWrong grow appear: One, helping LessWrong grow in order to be seen as “elitist” by the world will only smear their public reputation. This would hurt the site and make the parent organization look bad. Two, if LessWrong really is “elitist” in the nasty sense of the word, I have to refuse to help them for ethical reasons.
The people here are describing themselves and each other in public as “elitist”. But some of them use their real names on the forum. This is the internet where what you say might last forever. Yet here they are smearing themselves and each other, the LessWrong website, and the Singularity Institute (by association), as “elitist”.
Nobody seems to think that this is a bad idea but me. The clearing of sanity in a jungle has begun to look too much like the jungle itself to me. At this point, it’s either try to explain it to them or revoke my offer to volunteer and leave the site. I figure “These guys care about rationality, right? How hard can it be? I’ll explain my view and we’ll probably come to a nice sensible agreement of some kind.”
That attempt (this thread) didn’t go over too well, for reasons that still aren’t completely clear to me due to the large number of completely different criticisms. Few have responded to the topic itself, so I don’t really know whether people agree or disagree. Some people think they speak for the group, but I have never seen that work out on LessWrong—so far, those I’ve seen speaking for the group have been verifiably incorrect. So I made a poll. Where I am at right now is that even though some (Schminux, Mitchell_Porter) seem to think I have potential to be a good writer here, I am so terribly put off by the way people are smearing themselves as elitists that if it doesn’t get resolved somehow, I’m more likely to throw up than ever write you guys an article.
I either have to try to resolve my concerns about the “elitism” talk, or go do something better with my time than stay here being smeared as an “elitist” with the rest of you.
If anyone can suggest a resolution to this problem, I’m more than willing to hear it.
The word “elitism” is vague and affect-laden. In order to have a productive conversation about the set of topics that the label “elitism” vaguely points towards, it is necessary to set aside that term and get into specifics, rather than letting the conversation revolve around the word “elitism”.
Before you started posting on Less Wrong, the word “elitism” (and its variants) rarely appeared on the website. You introduced the word to the conversation (e.g., here), and you have used it again and again (over a hundred times, according to your comment history). That is why some people have expressed their opinions in terms of the word “elitism” (where their opinion, roughly, is that they want Less Wrong to have high quality content). So if you just want people to stop using the word “elitism”, you should be able to accomplish that (for the most part) by not using the word “elitism.”
You let yourself get sidetracked from your goal of growing Less Wrong and decided to lead a largely irrelevant side conversation centered on the word “elitism” (what it means, whether it applies to Less Wrong, whether people might get the impression that it applies to Less Wrong, etc.). This discussion has been unproductive and lengthy, and you didn’t heed the signals to stop taking the conversation in that direction (which included downvotes, comments about how you should proceed differently, and the obvious lack of progress towards your goal).
If you weren’t offering to do work to help the site, I’d second Morendil’s suggestion that you stick to object-level conversations, at least for a while. Maybe once you’ve spent some more time here and gotten a better feel for the site and its users you could re-engage in meta-level conversations about improving Less Wrong. That still might be the best option in the actual situation.
Another potential option for moving forward is for you to focus on more concrete questions about improving the site which draw more directly on your web marketing expertise. Is there a standard menu of options that web marketing professionals use to help a site grow? Do some of those options stand a better chance of maintaining the site’s quality, or can they be tailored to do so? Are there proven techniques for preventing a drop in quality in the face of growth? If your company does this sort of thing, what kinds of conversations do you have with organizations to try to figure out how to increase their web presence in a way that’s consistent with their goals? You’re the one who has been leading this effort to improve the site; figure out how to lead it in a more productive direction. (And be aware that many Less Wrongers are losing their patience with you, or have already lost it. So don’t waste whatever attention you can get).
I don’t think you understand the very bad reaction I had to elitism. I feel that it is very important not to contribute to elitism (by some definitions like this one, which are not the same as the more popular interpretations here from what I can tell, though I didn’t know that before) and that it is also very important to avoid being judged as an elitist (by that definition). I feel so strongly about this that I wanted to quit. According to my poll, 20% have the same strong feelings I do.
Based on the fact that you didn’t seem to realize I was willing to quit over this and didn’t see further interaction as worthwhile unless it was determined that most people here do not support elitism (by the particular definition), I would have to guess that you have a radically different idea of what elitism is from the definition that I was using.
I have realized that I need to learn a lot more about other people’s ideas of elitism. This is an important topic to me. Would you be interested in explaining your ideas about elitism?
Thanks for the obviously thought-out response.
This, perhaps, is where you missed an opportunity to apply a lesson from the Sequences. There is no urgency to solving the problem, the urgent task is to understand it, and it is this task that requires time.
You might also have missed subtle cues that you were violating tacit norms of behaviour, for instance when Luke said “we could debate in this comment thread” and you ignored that in favor of making a new post.
This stands out a bit from the rest of your comment: it suggests you are idealizing the community, rather than acknowledging the consequences of its being made up of human beings equipped with standard issue human brains.
The reason I suggest you write about substantive topics is that this will give you more of a chance to get acculturated into the thinking tools that are the cause of your perceiving this as “a clearing of sanity in a jungle”.
Even for the most acculturated among this community, best performance consists of applying some of these thinking tools some of the time, somewhat competently. Rationality remains the exception rather than the rule—this is implied in the very name “Less Wrong”.
Play a round of Rationalist Taboo for yourself (i.e. don’t try to second-guess what anyone else means by that term) on “elitist”. Spell out what it is exactly that your ethics does not allow you to support or be seen as supporting. Approach this question lightly, with an open mind and no bottom line already filled in. Now relate this specific question to the way this community approaches ethical questions—you do not have to agree with the community, but you have to grasp what the approach is.
Are you willing to do the above?
If you can steer clear of any meta-discussion (including even allusions to meta topics), this could even be good material for a post.
This was so sane, Morendil. Thank you.
I don’t know why I didn’t realize that I needed to understand this better before I jumped in. I was ignorant of my own ignorance. Sometimes when you don’t realize you’re missing a piece of information, there is nothing to warn you. Other times, I see that things are going to be complex. (Which is why I took the time to think it out and wrote something like ten pages on different solutions to Eternal September and their consequences). I also do that at work—I clarify what the purpose of the project is before I code it. For some reason, that little flag was missing here. Now I get to try and guess why.
I think you’re right that I don’t pick up on hints enough. I really don’t get why people hint. That seems dysfunctional to me. I wish they’d just be clear.
The problem isn’t that I idealized the community, the problem is … how do I explain this. I am extremely prone to a particular bias. I know I have it, I just don’t know the word for it. I give people too much credit. It’s something I do over and over again. Not sure how to stop it. I seem to need to learn about each group’s flaws individually.
I started challenging my ideas and using logic at 17, and I’ve been pretty hard core about it since then. I’m already using a lot of the thinking tools. Apparently I still am not perfect. I feel like I really needed to be part of a group of people capable of pointing out my flaws and giving me ideas I would not have thought of. I am so grateful for this. I will have a chance to find any unseen problems now.
Thank you for that. I feel better about not being perfect. (: Still going to aim for perfection though. (:
I decided to take your and Alicorn’s suggestion on this. At first I didn’t know what that meant but I have since found the correct reading materials.
I would love to do that. I’ve been thinking that if I can learn enough about the political sides that seem to be triggered here, I can transcend thinking inside that dichotomy, and perhaps show others how to do the same. That’s my thought on how to present it. Do you have anything to suggest in addition?
I don’t speak for all of Less Wrong here, but spending two years at Cambridge has already primed me to have an instinctive tribal urge to attack anyone who attacks elitism, because they tend to be Guardian comment section class warfare types, aka “the other side”. It is a mindkill topic for me, so it’s probably a mindkill topic for a lot of people here. It might even be a mindkill topic for you, I don’t know. But it does mean you need to tread really carefully when you talk about it. There’s a reason I need to consciously shrug off Guardian articles, and make myself not read through 10 pages of comments that will make me angry.
Guardian commenters are at least the more intelligent face of “the other side”; I understand there are many more people in both the US and the UK who share those views but are much less eloquent about them.
The way you use the word “smear” is telling my System 1 that you are on “the other side”, which makes it hard to sympathise with you at all. In fact I can physically feel the indignant mindkill response rising in myself right now, so I’m going to stop talking, but I hope I’ve made my point.
I admire how you’ve identified your reaction as a mindkill response. I don’t know whether this is a mindkill topic for me. I am not even sure that we disagree. I care specifically that people do not abuse or take advantage of each other verbally or otherwise, that people should not feel owed something by strangers, and that people should not make excuses to dominate one another. Class and intellect are not excuses for any of these things to me. Aside from those specifics, I don’t feel any tenacious urges to rend anyone’s ideas asunder.
Are we in agreement about this?
Because I have barely read any of the writing by “Guardian comment section class warfare types” I have very little idea what these two sides are like. Your post brings me into an awareness of the fact that there are groups of people who identify as “elitists”. Other than one specific (Mensa, which I view as a place where people who are lonely due to the differences that giftedness causes go to meet kindred spirits, and where people who are suffering from boredom go to alleviate ennui because they have a greater need for a challenge) and a vague sense that there must be overbearing jerks somewhere who call themselves elitists (I’ve met a few abusive intellectuals and I figure they must form groups somewhere) I was not aware that any groups actually identified as “elitists” or would want to defend that.
I have observed though, that mentioning intelligence differences is likely to trigger anger and the word “elitism” appears during those times.
I hate this reaction, so I try to be careful with phrasing.
Would you mind explaining these two sides?
It’s not that hard. If you feel adrenaline/indignance/anger at a Less Wrong comment and/or a compulsive urge to reply then the prior should be that you’ve been mindkilled, since when one takes the outside view people on LW tend to be a pretty reasonable bunch.
I am in agreement with your points as I interpret their statement. I am not sure my interpretation of the statements agrees with yours. For example, what do you mean by “not make excuses to dominate one another”? There are many situations (governments, chain-of-command in workplaces, employers) where people can legitimately dominate one another, if that’s what you mean by dominate.
Sure. I’ll PM you, since I don’t think a detailed description of British politics is very relevant. :)
The point that is relevant is that I’m not defending what you’re calling elitism, nor do I frequently call myself elitist, I’m just opposing people who oppose elitism, since when they use that word the definition tends to include me.
What I meant was just that it’s pleasant to see that someone else was doing that. I didn’t expect it. I know I’m capable of doing that, too. I am beginning to wonder about my response to the elitism thing. I’m asking myself questions like “Would I have responded differently if I was not upset?” and “If so, why did I let being upset influence my reaction to this specifically, when I know I can prevent it from influencing me on other things?”
Oh. I didn’t think of the possibility of you being lumped into that outside of your control.
That’s a good point and makes the situation more complex.
Back to the “two sides”—I don’t really want to be on one side or the other. I want to understand both. There’s got to be a way for both sides to get along with each other. It’s a problem worth solving. Do you think a lot of LessWrongers would agree with these statements, or do you think they’re too entrenched in mindkill?
There’s no such thing as “the other side”. There are a variety of arguments for anti-intellectualism, some of which may be more compelling than others.
I meant “the other side” in a blue vs green sense, hence the link. I didn’t claim it was a well-defined political stance, merely that perceived membership of it provoked a reaction in my system 1 and that fact was probably worth pointing out.
ETA: While the first half of the article you linked was interesting and informative, the rest of it plus the comments was precisely a demonstration of the kind of rhetoric that happens when people are motivated by what I referred to as “mindkill”. This time it’s surrounding the word “intellectual” rather than “elitism”, but my point still stands.
I’m quite surprised by your use of “smear”. I’m aware that “elitist” has negative connotations, but not nearly as bad as “sexist” or “racist”.
To clarify the connotations you’re seeing, would you agree that MIT is “elitist”? Do you think saying that is a slur?
I consider LessWrong to be “elitist” in the same way that MIT is—if anything, LessWrong is much less elitist than mainstream academia.
Neither LessWrong not MIT would use “elitist” in their self-description, but both would answer “yes” if asked whether they are elitist.
I find this confusing too. Maybe Epiphany is coming from somewhere like the American place where a prosecutor will always remember to address a defendant with a PhD. as ‘doctor’ in order to turn the jury against them.
Thanks for theorizing that—my situation was different from the situation most of you guys probably had growing up, I was disadvantaged. That might be the cause for the differing viewpoints. I have realized I’m pretty ignorant about other points of view on elitism. Care to explain yours? I want to understand them.
I probably internalized something like this growing up:
There are people who are really good at something,
this is a good thing,
I’m not one of them,
but if I work very hard I could be.
I haven’t been very aware of social class issues or using ‘elitism’ as an actual term. So my quick association with someone calling out elitism as a bad thing is that they’re saying that people shouldn’t try to be very good at anything. People who grew up more social class aware might have quite different instant associations.
Hmm. That’s interesting. What’s interesting is that I relate with you completely about knowing that there are people who are good at things and wanting to work to become one, and not seeing anything wrong with it. I even want to defend the right to work to become good at things.
But I don’t call that elitism.
Why do you?
Because that’s what I think the people who say LW should be more elitist are saying.
I did not attend MIT but I am really curious about other people’s ideas about elitism and I realize now that I was ignorant about them before. Would you mind explaining your ideas on elitism please?
I don’t really have well thought-out ideas on elitism, but I think there are places like MIT that have high standards that everybody accepts as normal, and I’m not sure of what distinguishes situations where the high standards are accepted, and situations where those standards would give rise to accusations of “elitism”.
Overall I don’t consider “elitism” a very useful word because it’s vague and can describe many different things: “my group has more qualities than other groups”, “you should grand me special respect just because of this group I belong to”, “some people are more skilled or more gifted than others”, etc. - add to that a general negative connotation, and it seems like a multi-purpose boo light, along with “fascist”, “anti-American”, “defeatist”, “terrorist”, “cult”, “fanatic”, etc.
(have you read the sequence on words? It’s very relevant here, especially the bit on sneaking in connotations )
By the way, in the line of emotive conjugations like (from various sources)
… you could add
Debating over whether “elitist” is the right word or not doesn’t seem much more useful than it does in those other cases.
The word “elitist” has political connotations. It is often used in right wing political discourse as a slur against liberals. For example the phrase “intellectual elite” is used a great deal in this article defending Sarah Palin. Some of these upvotes may be made by people who interpret “do you think elitism is bad” as asking “Do you hate university professors and would you vote for Sarah Palin?”
Thank you for pointing this out. I don’t bother with politics, (I quit being interested a long time ago when I realized that nothing was being solved and no one was looking for solutions that would get to the root of the problem because they seemed to prefer squabbling) so I didn’t know that.
I see now that it’s something I really need to learn more about if I want to understand elitism better. And I do. Would you mind explaining more or, if you know of good reading materials, direct me?
I think it’s more useful to first better understand the reasons for wanting to understand “elitism” better. (I expect you are wrong in believing that it’s a project worth working on.)
On the political use, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_elite
I bring up the political connotations because I don’t think Less Wrong is particularly snobbish or exclusionary, and I think there are more flattering reasons why someone might choose to label themselves as “elitist”.
Personally, I think the word “elitist” is too politically charged and emotionally laden to be of much use. There are a few different questions that the word lumps in together, I outline them below and my opinion of them.
Question 1. Should this site be hostile towards new members? (No)
Question 2. Should this site praise intelligence and rationality? (Yes)
Question 3. What privileges should those regarded as particularly rational receive? (No formal privileges)
Question 4. How concerned should we be with trying to preserve the current culture? (Somewhat, but not to the extent of making people feel small)
It’s interesting that “elitist” doesn’t strike me as being politically charged—I would even be hard-pressed to tell whether it seems more left-wing or right-wing (if it wasn’t for your comment, I’d tend to call it slightly right-wing).
Maybe it’s because elitism vs. anti-intellectualism isn’t as much of a hot political issue here in France; maybe French people (or French politicians?) are less hung-up about seeming elitist than people in lesser countries.
This article seems to indicate a clear cultural difference between at least France and the US on the issue of elitism.
Wow that’s interesting. Thank you for the article. Do the French find it horrible when intelligent people end up on the wrong educational tier? What is thought about those who are unhappy because they’re brighter than their tier allows them to be?
Eh, I don’t know enough to answer you with much confidence on that, sorry.
There are some significant differences between the French and American educational sytems: we have the bac, a national standardized exam everybody takes at the end of high school, and getting a good grade at that can open a lot of doors, so is often a “way out” for a smart kid in a bad environment. Also, there are many good colleges with nearly free education, so French students typically graduate with waaay less debt than American ones, and you don’t often hear of people who cut their education short because they were poor. Socialism: it works, bitches :D (disclaimer: I don’t identify as a socialist and don’t want to start a flame war, I just like poking fun at Americans).
Also, from what I’ve heard of Americans, I got the impression that smart kids would feel “held back” because the system cared more about not preventing the dumb kids from being left behind than about stimulating the smart kids, resulting in some smart kids getting bored out of their minds. I think that’s less of a concern in France, it seems to be more of an American thing.
Overall I have a pretty low opinion of the American system, and concerns about my kid’s education is one reason why I am reticent to move to the US (despite all the things that the US does better than France). And I get the impression that concerns of “elitism” may be partly behind the low quality of the American system.
But then, I haven’t researched the topic in much depth (prior to this conversation, I wasn’t aware that “elitism” sounded all that bad to Americans); it would be interesting to look at the British system, that is probably a bit closer to the French system than to the American one. The Chinese system is probably even more extreme than the French one, and Chinese people coming to France have a bit of the same reaction that I have when hearing about the American system—those people are crazy and lazy!
This post is currently tied for eighth most downvoted of all time (-22), while your original post on growing LW is tied for 25th most upvoted post of all time (+49). If you could figure out how to induce those responses at will, you could play us like a yoyo. :-)
Thank you so much for this. It was encouraging. I have decided to do just that—figure out how to present to this audience. (:
Though, I do not plan to write intentionally unpopular posts. (:
As far as I can tell, you’re trying to use standard arguments and appeals to emotion and group membership. LWers, as a general rule, come here because it’s a community that mostly ignores those appeals. LW is one of very few places I’ve come across where this is the case.
In general, the most effective thing I think you could do to improve your posts and comments would be to use more specific claims and back them up with specific evidence. You’re doing a great job of creating outlines before you post, and with translating your ideas into simple language (really, we do appreciate that). You could work a bit on being concise: there’s no need to write an essay just to ask if we should have more areas than just Discussion and Main.
Another, specific thing relating to this post: taboo “elitist” and all synonyms. You already started to reduce elitism to the parts that were bad, and I think you could benefit by going a bit further with that thread.
Finally, we kind of do have a third level: the biweekly open threads. This probably belongs there.
Oh, was that what the post was about? Right, thanks.
Thank you, Wedrifid. (:
My intent was to say, basically “We look really bad, let’s not look bad” which, I realize, is different from a scientifically provable or mathematically verifiable point, but it’s interesting you went so far as to interpret this as “appeals to emotion”. Maybe you meant something else was wrong with it?
I am working on being concise, thanks for the suggestion.
I did work out what I mean by “elitism” that’s here.
Also, I’ve decided to investigate what other people mean by elitism. Do you care to explain your point of view?
In this case, it’s easy to predict how LessWrong is going to react. Your initial posts were well-received because you pointed out a potential problem, LW’s high bounce rate, and even created some nice graphs. But when a consensus started to emerge that reducing the bounce rate would actually be a net negative, instead of accepting this or refuting it, you made a long series of posts mostly reiterating the same unconvincing points. Doing that will result in a poor reception.
Weird that you interpreted it that way. I thought I was working on solving the problem. This post would be an exception. I had a mind kill reaction surrounding “elitism” and, like 20% of the people who took my poll, was trying to decide whether or not I should quit LessWrong.
How did you end up with the perspective that I was wasting time reiterating unconvincing points?