I don’t find myself having a need here. Doing what Brendan said with appending “rationalist” or “lesswrong” or some other DuckDuckGo-fu to my search queries usually works. Sometimes I find myself browsing through tag pages here on LW too. Other times I’ll look at sites like Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or Stack Exchange. And with the advent of LLMs, I find myself increasingly using Claude instead of web searches.
I suspect pretty strongly that this isn’t the case, but I might be failing to see the usefulness of a search engine limited to rationalist sites. I think concrete examples of when you think it would be useful would be helpful. Do any come to mind?
One somewhat large consideration is that, when I search for something, I type the query into my URL bar and then hit enter. I have my browser (Firefox) configured to automatically search DuckDuckGo when I do that. I think most browsers do something similar by default. So for normal, quick searches, I think the trivial inconvenience is actually pretty important and the rationalist search engine would be something I’d try only if the first approach of using the URL bar didn’t work.
I’m not sure how common this is, but I at least feel like there’s some sort of cognitive overhead in play. Yet another monthly bill. Yet another think in my bookmarks. Yet another thing to keep in the back of my mind. I suspect I’m in something like the 99th percentile in how minimalist I am, but I also suspect that these sorts of thing are non-trivial considerations for maybe 10-70% of others.
Personally, I would like to spend less time browsing the web. Suppose that the rationalist search engine was an improvement. If so, I think it’d be some sort of “one step forward and two steps back”. Two steps back because I’d like to do less of this semi-productive web browsing; one step forward because (in this hypothetical) it’d make the semi-productive web browsing more productive.
Hey Adam, please review some of replies I’ve made to other commentators for issues I don’t address here.
>ease of use
A keyboard shortcut, chrome extension that serves the results in a side bar or some other spot, autocomplete in the search bar, or bookmark would remove that friction.
If I want to go to lesswrong, I hit ctrl-t for a new tab, type “les” and chrome completes the url. The same would apply.
>cognitive overhead
I do not think about those things for something that delivers me consistent value. If the starting premise is “I don’t value this.” It doesn’t matter what comes after it.
>less time browsing
Wanting to spend less time doing semi-productive browsing isn’t something a better search engine can fix—unless it’s because the result quality is the reason the time is semi-productive.
A keyboard shortcut, chrome extension that serves the results in a side bar or some other spot, autocomplete in the search bar, or bookmark would remove that friction.
Good point. I see the need to set that up as a downside but ultimately a relatively small one.
I do not think about those things for something that delivers me consistent value. If the starting premise is “I don’t value this.” It doesn’t matter what comes after it.
Yeah, that makes sense too. I was thinking along the lines of “I don’t think this would provide me a lot of value, but maybe it’d provide a little value. But if it provides a small amount of value, the small downsides might outweigh the small value.”
I would not pay for it. Some thoughts:
I don’t find myself having a need here. Doing what Brendan said with appending “rationalist” or “lesswrong” or some other DuckDuckGo-fu to my search queries usually works. Sometimes I find myself browsing through tag pages here on LW too. Other times I’ll look at sites like Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or Stack Exchange. And with the advent of LLMs, I find myself increasingly using Claude instead of web searches.
I suspect pretty strongly that this isn’t the case, but I might be failing to see the usefulness of a search engine limited to rationalist sites. I think concrete examples of when you think it would be useful would be helpful. Do any come to mind?
One somewhat large consideration is that, when I search for something, I type the query into my URL bar and then hit enter. I have my browser (Firefox) configured to automatically search DuckDuckGo when I do that. I think most browsers do something similar by default. So for normal, quick searches, I think the trivial inconvenience is actually pretty important and the rationalist search engine would be something I’d try only if the first approach of using the URL bar didn’t work.
I’m not sure how common this is, but I at least feel like there’s some sort of cognitive overhead in play. Yet another monthly bill. Yet another think in my bookmarks. Yet another thing to keep in the back of my mind. I suspect I’m in something like the 99th percentile in how minimalist I am, but I also suspect that these sorts of thing are non-trivial considerations for maybe 10-70% of others.
Personally, I would like to spend less time browsing the web. Suppose that the rationalist search engine was an improvement. If so, I think it’d be some sort of “one step forward and two steps back”. Two steps back because I’d like to do less of this semi-productive web browsing; one step forward because (in this hypothetical) it’d make the semi-productive web browsing more productive.
Hey Adam, please review some of replies I’ve made to other commentators for issues I don’t address here.
>ease of use
A keyboard shortcut, chrome extension that serves the results in a side bar or some other spot, autocomplete in the search bar, or bookmark would remove that friction.
If I want to go to lesswrong, I hit ctrl-t for a new tab, type “les” and chrome completes the url. The same would apply.
>cognitive overhead
I do not think about those things for something that delivers me consistent value. If the starting premise is “I don’t value this.” It doesn’t matter what comes after it.
>less time browsing
Wanting to spend less time doing semi-productive browsing isn’t something a better search engine can fix—unless it’s because the result quality is the reason the time is semi-productive.
Good point. I see the need to set that up as a downside but ultimately a relatively small one.
Yeah, that makes sense too. I was thinking along the lines of “I don’t think this would provide me a lot of value, but maybe it’d provide a little value. But if it provides a small amount of value, the small downsides might outweigh the small value.”