I think you’re vastly underestimating internet usage here. One of the best things Facebook has done (in my opinion) is massively proliferate the practice of internet arguing. The enforced principle of not getting socked by someone in a fit of rage just makes the internet so irresistible for speaking your mind, you know?
Additionally, every so often I see my siblings scrolling through Facebook or some “funny image collection” linked from Facebook, seeing for the first time images I saw years ago. If the internet has a higher-than average intelligence, then the internet usage resulting from Facebook is a powerful intelligence boost to the general population.
I suppose I should write my analysis here into a proper post some time, as I do consider it a significant modern event.
I agree that the internet usage has lead to a massive proliferation of certain types of knowledge and certain types of intelligent thought.
At the same time, it’s important to note that image memes, Twitter, and Tumblr have increasingly replaced Livejournal or other long-form writing at the same time that popular discussion has expanded, and style guides have increasingly encourage three-sentence paragraphs over five-sentence paragraphs for internet publishing. There are a few exceptions—fanfiction has been tending to longer and longer-form, often exceeding the length of what previous generations would traditionally consider a doorstopper by orders of magnitude* -- but much social media focuses on short and often very short form writing.
There are at least a dozen Harry Potter fanfictions with a higher wordcount than the entire Harry Potter series, spinoff media included. Several My Little Pony authors have put out similar million-word-plus texts in just a few years, including a couple of the top twenty read fictions. This may increase tolerance for nonfiction long reads, although I’m uncertain the effects will hit the general populace.
I agree that the Internet is a boost to human intelligence, relative to the TV that it is replacing and to whatever-it-was that TV replaced—drinking at the pub, probably. I don’t think the effect is large compared to the selection bias of hanging out in LW-ish parts of the Internet.
My current heuristic is to take special note of the times LessWrong has a well-performing post identify one of the hundreds of point-biases I’ve formalized in my own independent analysis of every person and disagreement I’ve ever seen or imagined.
I’m sure there are better methods to measure that LessWrong can figure out for itself, but mine works pretty well for me.
Not quite sure what you mean here; could you give an example?
But this aside, it seems that you are in some sense discussing the performance of LessWrong, the website, in identifying and talking about biases; while I was discussing the performance of LessWrongers, the people, in applying rationality to their real lives.
A good example would be any of the articles about identity.
It comes down to a question of what frequency of powerful realizations individual rationalists are having that make their way back to LessWrong. I’m estimating it’s high, but I can easily re-assess my data under the assumption that I’m only seeing a small fraction of the realizations individual rationalists are having.
I think you’re vastly underestimating internet usage here. One of the best things Facebook has done (in my opinion) is massively proliferate the practice of internet arguing. The enforced principle of not getting socked by someone in a fit of rage just makes the internet so irresistible for speaking your mind, you know?
Additionally, every so often I see my siblings scrolling through Facebook or some “funny image collection” linked from Facebook, seeing for the first time images I saw years ago. If the internet has a higher-than average intelligence, then the internet usage resulting from Facebook is a powerful intelligence boost to the general population.
I suppose I should write my analysis here into a proper post some time, as I do consider it a significant modern event.
I agree that the internet usage has lead to a massive proliferation of certain types of knowledge and certain types of intelligent thought.
At the same time, it’s important to note that image memes, Twitter, and Tumblr have increasingly replaced Livejournal or other long-form writing at the same time that popular discussion has expanded, and style guides have increasingly encourage three-sentence paragraphs over five-sentence paragraphs for internet publishing. There are a few exceptions—fanfiction has been tending to longer and longer-form, often exceeding the length of what previous generations would traditionally consider a doorstopper by orders of magnitude* -- but much social media focuses on short and often very short form writing.
There are at least a dozen Harry Potter fanfictions with a higher wordcount than the entire Harry Potter series, spinoff media included. Several My Little Pony authors have put out similar million-word-plus texts in just a few years, including a couple of the top twenty read fictions. This may increase tolerance for nonfiction long reads, although I’m uncertain the effects will hit the general populace.
I agree that the Internet is a boost to human intelligence, relative to the TV that it is replacing and to whatever-it-was that TV replaced—drinking at the pub, probably. I don’t think the effect is large compared to the selection bias of hanging out in LW-ish parts of the Internet.
I’d agree if I thought LessWrong performed better than average.
What metric would you propose to measure LW performance?
My current heuristic is to take special note of the times LessWrong has a well-performing post identify one of the hundreds of point-biases I’ve formalized in my own independent analysis of every person and disagreement I’ve ever seen or imagined.
I’m sure there are better methods to measure that LessWrong can figure out for itself, but mine works pretty well for me.
Not quite sure what you mean here; could you give an example?
But this aside, it seems that you are in some sense discussing the performance of LessWrong, the website, in identifying and talking about biases; while I was discussing the performance of LessWrongers, the people, in applying rationality to their real lives.
A good example would be any of the articles about identity.
It comes down to a question of what frequency of powerful realizations individual rationalists are having that make their way back to LessWrong. I’m estimating it’s high, but I can easily re-assess my data under the assumption that I’m only seeing a small fraction of the realizations individual rationalists are having.