why don’t you just link people to this every time you see the problem pop up?
Tangentially… while encouraging others to provide links to relevant past discussions when a subject comes up is a fine thing, it ought not substitute for encouraging in ourselves the habit of searching for relevant past discussions before bringing a subject up.
Actually, a huge problem I have with LW is the sheer amount of discussions-inside-discussions we have. Especially in the Sequences, there’s just too many comments to humanly read. If we could make summaries of the consensus on any specific topic, and keep them updated as discussions progress...
I’m not suggesting reading all the comments everywhere. I agree that there’s a lot of them, and while I think your estimate of human capability here is low, I can certainly sympathize with the lack of desire to bother reading them all.
I am suggesting that Google is your friend. Googling “site:lesswrong.com cult,” for example, is a place to start if you’re actually interested in what people have said on this topic in the past.
As far as publishing updated summaries of LW consensus by topic goes, sure, if someone wanted to do that work they’d be welcome to do so.
You might also find the LW wiki useful, if you decide you’re willing to do some looking around (the link is at the top of the site).
For example, someone has taken the time to maintain a jargon file there, in the hopes of making local jargon more accessible to people. I realize it’s not quite as useful to newcomers as someone explaining the jargon each time, or as everyone restricting themselves to mainstream language all the time, but it might be better than nothing.
Tangentially… while encouraging others to provide links to relevant past discussions when a subject comes up is a fine thing, it ought not substitute for encouraging in ourselves the habit of searching for relevant past discussions before bringing a subject up.
Actually, a huge problem I have with LW is the sheer amount of discussions-inside-discussions we have. Especially in the Sequences, there’s just too many comments to humanly read. If we could make summaries of the consensus on any specific topic, and keep them updated as discussions progress...
I’m not suggesting reading all the comments everywhere.
I agree that there’s a lot of them, and while I think your estimate of human capability here is low, I can certainly sympathize with the lack of desire to bother reading them all.
I am suggesting that Google is your friend.
Googling “site:lesswrong.com cult,” for example, is a place to start if you’re actually interested in what people have said on this topic in the past.
As far as publishing updated summaries of LW consensus by topic goes, sure, if someone wanted to do that work they’d be welcome to do so.
You might also find the LW wiki useful, if you decide you’re willing to do some looking around (the link is at the top of the site).
For example, someone has taken the time to maintain a jargon file there, in the hopes of making local jargon more accessible to people. I realize it’s not quite as useful to newcomers as someone explaining the jargon each time, or as everyone restricting themselves to mainstream language all the time, but it might be better than nothing.