I enjoyed reading this post, in no small part due to the narcissistic pleasure of discussing a small community I am (to some degree) a part of. If there was some option to split a comment into a thread it seems like an ideal use would be found here.
At the very least, lesswrong provides a fairly high quality forum for discussion of topics appealing to nerdy types. Similar communities include stackexchange and math/science blogs, which are ‘harder’ than lesswrong; sites like reddit and xkcd forums tend to be on the ‘softer’ side of the spectrum. Lesswrong, so far, is the best open forum for the discussion of ‘futurist’ issues.
What lesswrong lacks in comparison to ‘harder’ sites is a broad base of subject specialists. The scope of discussion on lesswrong is quite broad; however, the base of expertise on lesswrong is very narrow as it consists mainly of SIAI members. It would be hard to argue that lesswrong would not benefit from the active participation of more experts from domains relevant to its interests: economics, psychology, computer science, mathematics, statistics. However, up to now, LW has attracted few such users, due perhaps to its low profile and the fact that the core members of the community do not seem to prioritize subject expertise. Yet until LW has that kind of userbase, it seems unlikely any high impact developments will arise from activity on LW (excluding efforts from SIAI members themselves.) In contrast, mathoverflow.net seems like precisely the recipe for combining expertise through the internet for the advancement of the sciences.
Perhaps what is more important is the emergence of the lesswrong “rationalist” subculture itself. Future historians might lump this subculture with the larger “atheism” subculture, which has much in common with the LW community in terms of demographic composition. What would be much more interesting is if the LW community grew to incorporate a much more demographically diverse userbase.
I would say lesswrong has had a moderate impact on my intellectual development since I started reading it as a college student. It was satisfying to see that others (such as Yudkowsky) were able to notice “what was wrong with philosophy” and in fact, this allowed me to divert my attention to preparing for statistics; on the whole, I probably would have spent more time arguing about various issues on the internet if Yudkowsky had not already argued those points (and probably much better than I could have.) Lesswrong/OB did not alert me to concerns about artificial intelligence (I was already thinking about them before encountering this site) and so far it has not succeeded in dissuading me from intending to do research that may contribute to the eventual development of artificial general intelligence.
I enjoyed reading this post, in no small part due to the narcissistic pleasure of discussing a small community I am (to some degree) a part of. If there was some option to split a comment into a thread it seems like an ideal use would be found here.
At the very least, lesswrong provides a fairly high quality forum for discussion of topics appealing to nerdy types. Similar communities include stackexchange and math/science blogs, which are ‘harder’ than lesswrong; sites like reddit and xkcd forums tend to be on the ‘softer’ side of the spectrum. Lesswrong, so far, is the best open forum for the discussion of ‘futurist’ issues.
What lesswrong lacks in comparison to ‘harder’ sites is a broad base of subject specialists. The scope of discussion on lesswrong is quite broad; however, the base of expertise on lesswrong is very narrow as it consists mainly of SIAI members. It would be hard to argue that lesswrong would not benefit from the active participation of more experts from domains relevant to its interests: economics, psychology, computer science, mathematics, statistics. However, up to now, LW has attracted few such users, due perhaps to its low profile and the fact that the core members of the community do not seem to prioritize subject expertise. Yet until LW has that kind of userbase, it seems unlikely any high impact developments will arise from activity on LW (excluding efforts from SIAI members themselves.) In contrast, mathoverflow.net seems like precisely the recipe for combining expertise through the internet for the advancement of the sciences.
Perhaps what is more important is the emergence of the lesswrong “rationalist” subculture itself. Future historians might lump this subculture with the larger “atheism” subculture, which has much in common with the LW community in terms of demographic composition. What would be much more interesting is if the LW community grew to incorporate a much more demographically diverse userbase.
I would say lesswrong has had a moderate impact on my intellectual development since I started reading it as a college student. It was satisfying to see that others (such as Yudkowsky) were able to notice “what was wrong with philosophy” and in fact, this allowed me to divert my attention to preparing for statistics; on the whole, I probably would have spent more time arguing about various issues on the internet if Yudkowsky had not already argued those points (and probably much better than I could have.) Lesswrong/OB did not alert me to concerns about artificial intelligence (I was already thinking about them before encountering this site) and so far it has not succeeded in dissuading me from intending to do research that may contribute to the eventual development of artificial general intelligence.