The ingroup library is a method for building realistic, sustainable neutral spaces that I haven’t seen come up. Ingroup here can be a family, or other community like a knitting space, or lesswrong. Why doesn’t lesswrong have a library, perhaps one that is curated by AI?
I have it in my backlog to build a library, based on a nested collapsible bulleted list along with a swarm of LLMs. (I have the software in a partially ready state!) It would create an article summary of your article, as well as link your article to the broader lesswrong knowledge base.
Your article would be summarised as below (CMIIW):
In the world there are ongoing culture wars, and noise overwhelming signal; so that one could defensibly take a stance that incoming information outside a trusted inner circule is untrustworthy and adversarial. Neutrality and neutral institutions are proposed as a difficult solution to this.
Neutrality refers to impartializing tactics / withdrawing above conflict / putting conflict in a box to facilitate cooperation between people
Neutral institutions / information sources things that both seem and are impartial, balanced, incorruptible, universal, legitimate, trustworthy, canonical, foundational. We don’t have many if any neutral institutions right now.
There is a hope for a “foundation” or a “framework” or a “system of the world” that people actually trust and consider legitimate, but it would require effort.
Now for my real comments:
> Strong systems-of-the-world are articulable. They can defend themselves. They can reflect on themselves. They can (and should) shatter in response to incompatible evidence, but they don’t sputter and shrug when a child first asks “why”.
I love how well put this is. I am reminded of Wan Shi Tong’s Library in the Avatar series.
I think neutral institutions spring up whenever there are huge abundances unlocked. For example, google felt like a neutral institution when it first opened, before SEO happened and people realised it was a great marketing space. I think this is because of
“Abundance is the only cure for scarcity, ever. Everything else merely allocates scarcity.”
I would like to see this one improved; specifically to have a dedicated UI where people can add books, vote on books, and review them. Maybe something like “people who liked X also liked Y”.
Also, not just textbooks, but also good popular science books, etc.
The ingroup library is a method for building realistic, sustainable neutral spaces that I haven’t seen come up. Ingroup here can be a family, or other community like a knitting space, or lesswrong. Why doesn’t lesswrong have a library, perhaps one that is curated by AI?
I have it in my backlog to build a library, based on a nested collapsible bulleted list along with a swarm of LLMs. (I have the software in a partially ready state!) It would create an article summary of your article, as well as link your article to the broader lesswrong knowledge base.
Your article would be summarised as below (CMIIW):
In the world there are ongoing culture wars, and noise overwhelming signal; so that one could defensibly take a stance that incoming information outside a trusted inner circule is untrustworthy and adversarial. Neutrality and neutral institutions are proposed as a difficult solution to this.
Neutrality refers to impartializing tactics / withdrawing above conflict / putting conflict in a box to facilitate cooperation between people
Neutral institutions / information sources things that both seem and are impartial, balanced, incorruptible, universal, legitimate, trustworthy, canonical, foundational. We don’t have many if any neutral institutions right now.
There is a hope for a “foundation” or a “framework” or a “system of the world” that people actually trust and consider legitimate, but it would require effort.
Now for my real comments:
> Strong systems-of-the-world are articulable. They can defend themselves. They can reflect on themselves. They can (and should) shatter in response to incompatible evidence, but they don’t sputter and shrug when a child first asks “why”.
I love how well put this is. I am reminded of Wan Shi Tong’s Library in the Avatar series.
I think neutral institutions spring up whenever there are huge abundances unlocked. For example, google felt like a neutral institution when it first opened, before SEO happened and people realised it was a great marketing space. I think this is because of
courtesy of @Screwtape in Rationality Quotes Fall 2024.
A few new fronts that humanity has either recently unlocked or I feel like are heavily underutilized:
Retrieval Augmented LLMs > LLMs > Search
AI Agents > human librarians > not having librarians
Outliners > word processors > erasers > pens
Well, arguably it does: https://www.lesswrong.com/library
Library in the sense of “we collect texts written by other people” is: The Best Textbooks on Every Subject
I would like to see this one improved; specifically to have a dedicated UI where people can add books, vote on books, and review them. Maybe something like “people who liked X also liked Y”.
Also, not just textbooks, but also good popular science books, etc.