There are other people involved in the community who you might find even more credible. For example: (a) Paul Christiano who was an international math olympiad medalist, wrote a 50 page paper on quantum computational complexity with Scott Aaronson as an undergraduate at MIT, and is a theoretical CS grad student at Berkeley. (b) Jacob Steinhardt, a Hertz graduate fellow who does machine learning research under Percy Liang at Stanford.
Of course, Christiano tends to issue disclaimers with his MIRI-branded AGI safety work, explicitly stating that he does not believe in alarmist UFAI scenarios. Which is fine, in itself, but it does show how people expect someone associated with these communities to sound.
And Jacob Steinhardt hasn’t exactly endorsed any “Twilight Zone” community norms or propaganda views. Errr, is there a term for “things everyone in a group thinks everyone else believes, whether or not they actually do”?
I’m not claiming otherwise: I’m merely saying that Paul and Jacob don’t dismiss LWers out of hand as obviously crazy, and have in fact found the community to be worthwhile enough to have participated substantially.
I think in this case we have to taboo the term “LWers” ;-). This community has many pieces in it, and two large parts of the original core are “techno-libertarian Overcoming Bias readers with many very non-mainstream beliefs that they claim are much more rational than anyone else’s beliefs” and “the SL4 mailing list wearing suits and trying to act professional enough that they might actually accomplish their Shock Level Four dreams.”
On the other hand, in the process of the site’s growth, it has eventually come to encompass those two demographics plus, to some limited extent, almost everyone who’s willing to assent that science, statistical reasoning, and the neuro/cognitive sciences actually really work and should be taken seriously. With special emphasis on statistical reasoning and cognitive sciences.
So the core demographic consists of Very Unusual People, but the periphery demographics, who now make up most of the community, consist of only Mildly Unusual People.
Of course, Christiano tends to issue disclaimers with his MIRI-branded AGI safety work, explicitly stating that he does not believe in alarmist UFAI scenarios. Which is fine, in itself, but it does show how people expect someone associated with these communities to sound.
And Jacob Steinhardt hasn’t exactly endorsed any “Twilight Zone” community norms or propaganda views. Errr, is there a term for “things everyone in a group thinks everyone else believes, whether or not they actually do”?
I’m not claiming otherwise: I’m merely saying that Paul and Jacob don’t dismiss LWers out of hand as obviously crazy, and have in fact found the community to be worthwhile enough to have participated substantially.
I think in this case we have to taboo the term “LWers” ;-). This community has many pieces in it, and two large parts of the original core are “techno-libertarian Overcoming Bias readers with many very non-mainstream beliefs that they claim are much more rational than anyone else’s beliefs” and “the SL4 mailing list wearing suits and trying to act professional enough that they might actually accomplish their Shock Level Four dreams.”
On the other hand, in the process of the site’s growth, it has eventually come to encompass those two demographics plus, to some limited extent, almost everyone who’s willing to assent that science, statistical reasoning, and the neuro/cognitive sciences actually really work and should be taken seriously. With special emphasis on statistical reasoning and cognitive sciences.
So the core demographic consists of Very Unusual People, but the periphery demographics, who now make up most of the community, consist of only Mildly Unusual People.
Yes, this seems like a fair assessment o the situation. Thanks for disentangling the issues. I’ll be more precise in the future.