I’m new to this site as a writer (and a writer in general), and I read LW’s user guide, to think more clearly about what kind of articles are expected and about why people are here. Direct quote:
LessWrong is a good place for someone who:
values curiosity, learning, self-improvement, figuring out what’s actually true (rather than just what you want to be true or just winning arguments)
will change their mind or admit they’re wrong in response to compelling evidence or argument
wants to work collaboratively with others to figure out what’s true
likes acknowledging and quantifying uncertainty and applying lessons from probability, statistics, and decision theory to your reasoning
is nerdy and interested in all questions of how the world works and who is not afraid to reach weird conclusions if the arguments seem valid
likes to be pedantic and precise, and likes to bet on their beliefs
doesn’t mind reading a lot
There is a style of communication and thought, that summarizes the spirit of most of these. It’s when your presentation is structured like a graph of dependencies.
“I believe x because of y” is much better than “I believe x”
Changing your mind is built into this type of writing, it says that they believe x because they believe that y => x, and/or that they believe x to the degree that y is true. It allows collaboration, because someone else can point out other implications of y, or that y isn’t true, or that y => x doesn’t hold, etc., and they have to change their mind. Or put in another way:
When you make the graph explicit, including the edges, the audience can judge the way things are connected, in addition to the conclusion.
It’s like open-sourcing the code (where your conclusion is like the “app”).
(and you can arrive at weird conclusions for free, since you’re simply following the graph)
But what about exploratory thinking?
You simply take your exploratory post, identify the parts that are solid, refactor the post into self-contained things with explicit paths of reasoning, and you take those posts as nodes to reason about and speculate about!
(maybe a better way to put it is that it encourages factoring out solid elements of an idea or conclusion, and that you have the Quick Takes feature for doing exploration?? idk this second part is way less solid lol)
Posts as nodes—what’s beautiful about LessWrong
I’m new to this site as a writer (and a writer in general), and I read LW’s user guide, to think more clearly about what kind of articles are expected and about why people are here. Direct quote:
There is a style of communication and thought, that summarizes the spirit of most of these. It’s when your presentation is structured like a graph of dependencies.
Changing your mind is built into this type of writing, it says that they believe x because they believe that
y => x, and/or that they believe x to the degree that y is true. It allows collaboration, because someone else can point out other implications of y, or that y isn’t true, or thaty => xdoesn’t hold, etc., and they have to change their mind. Or put in another way:It’s like open-sourcing the code (where your conclusion is like the “app”).
(and you can arrive at weird conclusions for free, since you’re simply following the graph)
But what about exploratory thinking?
You simply take your exploratory post, identify the parts that are solid, refactor the post into self-contained things with explicit paths of reasoning, and you take those posts as nodes to reason about and speculate about!
(maybe a better way to put it is that it encourages factoring out solid elements of an idea or conclusion, and that you have the Quick Takes feature for doing exploration?? idk this second part is way less solid lol)