Your post is all generalizations, with almost no specific examples. I think I disagree with most of the generalizations, but it would take an equally long post for me to explore why for each generalization.
In any case, you don’t make any recommendations for how Less Wrong users should change their behavior. I might agree with those if you had made them. Here are some possible policy prescriptions based on your complaints:
If you come across a cool concept Less Wrong is unfamiliar with, share it. I agree with this prescription.
If you want to write about something, consider doing some scholarship and figure out what people outside Less Wrong have already said about it, and citing it. I agree with this prescription.
Systematically assign Less Wrong users to consume other reading materials and discussion sites to find the best concepts and share them on Less Wrong. This seems like it might be promising, I don’t know.
Stop voting up posts unless they look like a typical EY sequence post. I disagree with this prescription. A typical EY sequence post is way longer than it needs to be and doesn’t cite any studies.
Try harder to write posts about topics EY covered. This seems like a silly heuristic. We should write posts about whatever topics are most profitable. If you want to argue that there are profits to be made in further exploration of specific topics EY covered, go ahead. If you think this is true for all topics EY covered, I suspect you are suffering from the halo effect around EY. The fact that the topic has been discussed in the past should, all else equal, make us less inclined to discuss it since more of what can usefully be said has already been said. Basic rationality posts on Less Wrong are as (probably) rare because basic rationality was covered a lot already in the sequences.
Choose an accurate title for your post so people will not do too badly by assuming it says exactly what the title says. I agree with this prescription.
Reread a post in full before linking to it. I’m not sure whether I agree with this prescription. Ideally every post would have a summary at the beginning, and it would be acceptable to read the summary only before linking if you’d read the full post in the past.
Discuss politics more outside the comments. I’m not sure whether I agree with this prescription. Discussing politics for its own sake seems low value to me because Less Wrong doesn’t have enough people to be influential, but it could be useful if it’s going to be a rationality exercise or example somehow. I suspect EY’s idea of using long past rationality failures as examples is a bad one because most people are way more familiar with contemporary rationality failures.
I recommend in future posts of this sort you attempt to take a random sample of Less Wrong posts and discuss them, so you will actually have evidence to support your claims.
If you come across a cool concept Less Wrong is unfamiliar with, share it. I agree with this prescription.
I often do this all the time and see others do so as well. Unfortunately it dosen’t seem to propagate the same way main articles written by Yvain or EY seem to even when the writing is of comparable quality. There seems little sense to accompany quality texts written by outside authors with more than some additional commentary or emphasis. Why duplicate labour and rewrite something that is already ok?
The “low hanging fruit” posts that recently popped up in discussion seemed like a promising trend to me. I want a lot more of people noticing how to do something slightly more optimally and posting it to discussion.
Unfortunately it dosen’t seem to propagate the same way main articles written by Yvain or EY seem to even when the writing is of comparable quality.
Maybe this is because more people see articles that are in Main?
Policy prescription: Allow posting of links in Main. I agree; whether something goes in Main should be based on how useful and important it is, not superficial considerations like whether you need to click a link to read it.
I’m in denial about what? Could you be more specific? I like getting frank criticism but your current statement is a little too general to be useful from my perspective.
It seems to me that you have pigeonholed me even when I said I only thought I disagreed. I can feel this impinging on my rationality. I didn’t have a firm stance on anything before your comment, but now saying “Konkvistador is right” seems like backing down, and I’m somewhat averse to doing it. (Nothing that would be very difficult to overcome, I’m just explaining how I think you’ve made me less rational.)
Your post is all generalizations, with almost no specific examples. I think I disagree with most of the generalizations, but it would take an equally long post for me to explore why for each generalization.
In any case, you don’t make any recommendations for how Less Wrong users should change their behavior. I might agree with those if you had made them. Here are some possible policy prescriptions based on your complaints:
If you come across a cool concept Less Wrong is unfamiliar with, share it. I agree with this prescription.
If you want to write about something, consider doing some scholarship and figure out what people outside Less Wrong have already said about it, and citing it. I agree with this prescription.
Systematically assign Less Wrong users to consume other reading materials and discussion sites to find the best concepts and share them on Less Wrong. This seems like it might be promising, I don’t know.
Stop voting up posts unless they look like a typical EY sequence post. I disagree with this prescription. A typical EY sequence post is way longer than it needs to be and doesn’t cite any studies.
Try harder to write posts about topics EY covered. This seems like a silly heuristic. We should write posts about whatever topics are most profitable. If you want to argue that there are profits to be made in further exploration of specific topics EY covered, go ahead. If you think this is true for all topics EY covered, I suspect you are suffering from the halo effect around EY. The fact that the topic has been discussed in the past should, all else equal, make us less inclined to discuss it since more of what can usefully be said has already been said. Basic rationality posts on Less Wrong are as (probably) rare because basic rationality was covered a lot already in the sequences.
Choose an accurate title for your post so people will not do too badly by assuming it says exactly what the title says. I agree with this prescription.
Reread a post in full before linking to it. I’m not sure whether I agree with this prescription. Ideally every post would have a summary at the beginning, and it would be acceptable to read the summary only before linking if you’d read the full post in the past.
Discuss politics more outside the comments. I’m not sure whether I agree with this prescription. Discussing politics for its own sake seems low value to me because Less Wrong doesn’t have enough people to be influential, but it could be useful if it’s going to be a rationality exercise or example somehow. I suspect EY’s idea of using long past rationality failures as examples is a bad one because most people are way more familiar with contemporary rationality failures.
I recommend in future posts of this sort you attempt to take a random sample of Less Wrong posts and discuss them, so you will actually have evidence to support your claims.
I often do this all the time and see others do so as well. Unfortunately it dosen’t seem to propagate the same way main articles written by Yvain or EY seem to even when the writing is of comparable quality. There seems little sense to accompany quality texts written by outside authors with more than some additional commentary or emphasis. Why duplicate labour and rewrite something that is already ok?
The “low hanging fruit” posts that recently popped up in discussion seemed like a promising trend to me. I want a lot more of people noticing how to do something slightly more optimally and posting it to discussion.
Maybe this is because more people see articles that are in Main?
Policy prescription: Allow posting of links in Main. I agree; whether something goes in Main should be based on how useful and important it is, not superficial considerations like whether you need to click a link to read it.
I agree. Maybe a policy where link articles over say 20 karma go there, or perhaps a once a month “best links” summary?
You’re in denial.
I’m in denial about what? Could you be more specific? I like getting frank criticism but your current statement is a little too general to be useful from my perspective.
It seems to me that you have pigeonholed me even when I said I only thought I disagreed. I can feel this impinging on my rationality. I didn’t have a firm stance on anything before your comment, but now saying “Konkvistador is right” seems like backing down, and I’m somewhat averse to doing it. (Nothing that would be very difficult to overcome, I’m just explaining how I think you’ve made me less rational.)