I haven’t looked as closely at this as you but from what I can tell the site looks much better if we only examine promoted posts. Meta and AI posts rarely make the front page. What does fill up the front page are the meet-up announcements. I’m not sure what to do about that since promoting that aspect of the site does seem important. It wouldn’t looks so bad if we were getting more front page worthy rationality/science posts.
Does anyone other than me have a bunch of post ideas they’ve been meaning to write but keep procrastinating on? If there are a couple of us, I have an idea.
28 were things that require you believe in our particular formulation of transhuman singularitarianism before the premise even makes sense,
I’ll just say it: for reasons totally unrelated to recruitment I’d like to see considerably less of these. People are pretty good about voting down the FAI ones (which are nearly always horrendously sloppy). But my sense is that, in general, posts on transhumanist/singularity topics are noticeably less rigorous and less insightful than posts on other topics. Why this is, is a rather interesting question. My guess is the lack of a foil. With topics in science, philosophy and rationality there are established authorities with empirical work to bolster our position and professional studies for us to criticize and engage with. When I did high school debate my best matches were with debaters much more talented and experienced than I because I would rise to their level. Conversely I would sink to the level of my least talented opponents. The problem with transhumanist/singularity topics is that a) people here already agree with the most talented contributors in the related fields and b) many of the other contributors in those fields are quite mediocre relative to domain experts in more mainstream fields.
I believe LW is at it’s best when it is engaging and criticizing mainstream institutions and popular ways of doing things and trying to provide alternatives. This is particularly the case when the target is a representative of traditional rationality. Now of course there is a Less Wrong critique of the mainstream regarding singularity and transhuman topics it’s just a rather simple and straight forward one which has been covered dozens of times. It is simple because most people, institutions and systems of thought have made zero effort to engage with transhumanism and Singulatarianism. There is no foil.
I realize of course I have no where near the standing to dictate the way Less Wrong should be. But occasional months where AI was forbidden as a topic, as it was in the very beginning, would I think, rejuvenate our discussions.
And yes, I realize I’m the guy who posted about Pet Cryonics in the discussion section.
I haven’t looked as closely at this as you but from what I can tell the site looks much better if we only examine promoted posts. Meta and AI posts rarely make the front page. What does fill up the front page are the meet-up announcements. I’m not sure what to do about that since promoting that aspect of the site does seem important. It wouldn’t looks so bad if we were getting more front page worthy rationality/science posts.
Does anyone other than me have a bunch of post ideas they’ve been meaning to write but keep procrastinating on? If there are a couple of us, I have an idea.
I’ll just say it: for reasons totally unrelated to recruitment I’d like to see considerably less of these. People are pretty good about voting down the FAI ones (which are nearly always horrendously sloppy). But my sense is that, in general, posts on transhumanist/singularity topics are noticeably less rigorous and less insightful than posts on other topics. Why this is, is a rather interesting question. My guess is the lack of a foil. With topics in science, philosophy and rationality there are established authorities with empirical work to bolster our position and professional studies for us to criticize and engage with. When I did high school debate my best matches were with debaters much more talented and experienced than I because I would rise to their level. Conversely I would sink to the level of my least talented opponents. The problem with transhumanist/singularity topics is that a) people here already agree with the most talented contributors in the related fields and b) many of the other contributors in those fields are quite mediocre relative to domain experts in more mainstream fields.
I believe LW is at it’s best when it is engaging and criticizing mainstream institutions and popular ways of doing things and trying to provide alternatives. This is particularly the case when the target is a representative of traditional rationality. Now of course there is a Less Wrong critique of the mainstream regarding singularity and transhuman topics it’s just a rather simple and straight forward one which has been covered dozens of times. It is simple because most people, institutions and systems of thought have made zero effort to engage with transhumanism and Singulatarianism. There is no foil.
I realize of course I have no where near the standing to dictate the way Less Wrong should be. But occasional months where AI was forbidden as a topic, as it was in the very beginning, would I think, rejuvenate our discussions.
And yes, I realize I’m the guy who posted about Pet Cryonics in the discussion section.