But a thing that strikes me here is this: the LW community really doesn’t, so far as I can tell, have the reputation of being a place where ideas don’t get frank enough criticism.
But the character of LW definitely has changed. In the early days when it was gaining its reputation, it seemed to be a place where you could often find lots of highly intense, vociferous debate over various philosophical topics. I feel that nowadays a lot of that character is gone. The community seems to have embraced a much softer and more inclusive discourse style, trying to minimize the overall amount of offense and anxiety one could feel when they are trying to engage here. And indeed, a large amount of the discussion topics these days are surrounding social norms and community norms, which is a pretty big difference from the original LW culture.
I’m not completely sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, we seem to have created a place that seems much more approachable (and the changes might probably be a factor in why I began to take part in the discussions somewhat recently), and less intimidating to newcomers. So I think that part of it is good. On the other hand, some of the best thinkers were people who had a pretty aggressive conversational style (such as EY himself). I think these people have mostly switched over to private discussions among people they trust with limited public engagement. It’s unclear how much we are missing from them.
There are obvious situations where you would desire one style of discourse versus the other: In situations where you need to gather support from many groups with potentially competing interests and complex needs, you would definitely prefer to be as inclusive and inoffensive as possible, while limiting discussion to matters that relate to everyone. In the situation which amounts to casual debate among trusted people, it becomes a lot safer to be as frank and transparent as possible.
LW began very organically as conversations between many people who already interacted quite frequently sort of merged into a single locus. That meant that lively and open debate could happen somewhat safely at least initially, but that changed as soon as the space became more known outside of its bubble and grew.
There’s nothing that can be done to prevent that from happening, I think, but one thing that can be done is to siphon aggressive conversations into separate locations, away from the front-facing side but still possible to enter if you’re prepared.
But the character of LW definitely has changed. In the early days when it was gaining its reputation, it seemed to be a place where you could often find lots of highly intense, vociferous debate over various philosophical topics. I feel that nowadays a lot of that character is gone. The community seems to have embraced a much softer and more inclusive discourse style, trying to minimize the overall amount of offense and anxiety one could feel when they are trying to engage here. And indeed, a large amount of the discussion topics these days are surrounding social norms and community norms, which is a pretty big difference from the original LW culture.
I’m not completely sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, we seem to have created a place that seems much more approachable (and the changes might probably be a factor in why I began to take part in the discussions somewhat recently), and less intimidating to newcomers. So I think that part of it is good. On the other hand, some of the best thinkers were people who had a pretty aggressive conversational style (such as EY himself). I think these people have mostly switched over to private discussions among people they trust with limited public engagement. It’s unclear how much we are missing from them.
There are obvious situations where you would desire one style of discourse versus the other: In situations where you need to gather support from many groups with potentially competing interests and complex needs, you would definitely prefer to be as inclusive and inoffensive as possible, while limiting discussion to matters that relate to everyone. In the situation which amounts to casual debate among trusted people, it becomes a lot safer to be as frank and transparent as possible.
LW began very organically as conversations between many people who already interacted quite frequently sort of merged into a single locus. That meant that lively and open debate could happen somewhat safely at least initially, but that changed as soon as the space became more known outside of its bubble and grew.
There’s nothing that can be done to prevent that from happening, I think, but one thing that can be done is to siphon aggressive conversations into separate locations, away from the front-facing side but still possible to enter if you’re prepared.