I just want to thank all of you, as both individuals, and as a community, for being a decent place for discourse. In the last few months, I’ve been actively engaging with Less Wrong more frequently. Prior to that, I mostly tried asking for opinions on an issue I wanted analyzed on my Facebook. On Facebook, there has been typically been one person writing something like ’ha, this is a strange question! [insert terrible joke’here]. Other than that, radio silence.
On Less Wrong, typical responses are people not thinking I’m weird because I want to analyze stuff outside of the classroom, or question things outside of a meeting dedicated to airing one’s skepticism. On Less Wrong, typical responses to my queries are correcting me directly, without beating around the bush, or fearing of offending me. All of you ask me to clarify my thinking when it’s confused. When you cannot provide an academic citation, you seem to try to extract what most relevant information you can from the anecdotes from your personal experiences. I find this greatly refreshing.
I created this open thread to ask a specific question, and then I asked some more. Even just from this open thread, the gratification I received from being taken seriously has made me eager to ask more questions, and read other threads in discussion. Reading responses to posters besides myself, and further responses to my comments, have made me feel the samey way. For all I know, there are big problems with Less Wrong to be fixed. However, I’m surprised I found somewhere this non-awful on the Internet at all. So, thanks.
Many people I know report having much lower-quality experiences on Facebook than mine. The algorithm for improving the quality of the Facebook experience is fairly straightforward: if someone posts content you don’t want to see, hide them. If someone makes comments on your statuses you don’t want, unfriend them. Repeat. At some point you may need to find new friends, or at least follows.
I just want to thank all of you, as both individuals, and as a community, for being a decent place for discourse. In the last few months, I’ve been actively engaging with Less Wrong more frequently. Prior to that, I mostly tried asking for opinions on an issue I wanted analyzed on my Facebook. On Facebook, there has been typically been one person writing something like ’ha, this is a strange question! [insert terrible joke’here]. Other than that, radio silence.
On Less Wrong, typical responses are people not thinking I’m weird because I want to analyze stuff outside of the classroom, or question things outside of a meeting dedicated to airing one’s skepticism. On Less Wrong, typical responses to my queries are correcting me directly, without beating around the bush, or fearing of offending me. All of you ask me to clarify my thinking when it’s confused. When you cannot provide an academic citation, you seem to try to extract what most relevant information you can from the anecdotes from your personal experiences. I find this greatly refreshing.
I created this open thread to ask a specific question, and then I asked some more. Even just from this open thread, the gratification I received from being taken seriously has made me eager to ask more questions, and read other threads in discussion. Reading responses to posters besides myself, and further responses to my comments, have made me feel the samey way. For all I know, there are big problems with Less Wrong to be fixed. However, I’m surprised I found somewhere this non-awful on the Internet at all. So, thanks.
Many people I know report having much lower-quality experiences on Facebook than mine. The algorithm for improving the quality of the Facebook experience is fairly straightforward: if someone posts content you don’t want to see, hide them. If someone makes comments on your statuses you don’t want, unfriend them. Repeat. At some point you may need to find new friends, or at least follows.