If you want to leave this board, but suspect you lack the willpower to do so, then there’s a better way than Suicide By Cop. Just scramble your password, add a firewall filter for LW (or a new “lesswrong.com 127.0.0.1″ entry in your hosts file) and be done with it.
No need to burn the commons on your way out.
If what you’re looking for are reassurances, PMs to those you’ve positively interacted with are the way to achieve that (no bystander effect, less drama etc.).
If, however, you’re drunk, um, don’t comment while drunk? Yea, I’m not too good with that one either.
This is meant as honest advice since IIRC I’ve upvoted you a number of times. (If I hadn’t read Why Our Kind Can’t Cooperate I might have gone for “Don’t cry. You know, like a girl.” Luckily I have, so I didn’t.)
If you want to leave this board, but suspect you lack the willpower to do so
I feel like I have a duty before a community that I see massive potential in. To stand up for my values and denounce all the shit I hate here in an articulate, reasoned manner. But I’m very much not up to the task, and this makes me feel frustrated and miserable. And angry at my own impotence in the matter.
It’d be a big amount of work to even call out the most egregious shitty shit here on a regular basis, with some citations and explanations for why I did so. And it feels like people hardly even care.
I feel like I have a duty before a community that I see massive potential in. To stand up for my values and denounce all the shit I hate here in an articulate, reasoned manner.
Then collect the worst examples and make an article of them. Preferably the ones that were upvoted (because if they were downvoted it means the community already disagrees with them). If the situation is so horrible, you should have an easy job. Just create a text file on your desktop, and anytimes something pisses you off, put the permalink there. Wait until you have enough material (please, don’t make it a series of short articles), then process it.
It’d be a big amount of work to even call out the most egregious shitty shit here on a regular basis, with some citations and explanations for why I did so.
If the things are really so horrible, is the explanation even necessary? Just give a dozen citations, which prove it wasn’t a one-time event, and that’s it. Preferably they should be citations of different people.
If you want to make a drama, please put some work into it. Or use your rationality and outsource the job—take 10 of your most ideologically close friends and ask them to spend one afternoon trying to find the most horrible upvoted comments, so that you can write a critical article.
I understand. However, there isn’t some binary pass/fail criterion. This community can become incrementally better (obligatory “less wrong”) or worse. Your contributions are helping steer it along a good path (ahem, usually).
If you’ve set extremely ambitious goals for yourself (“I will make this community live up to its full potential”), and those then stop you from pursuing more realistic milestones along that trajectory, then you’ve shot yourself in the foot:
The perfect is the enemy of the good, and all that. Compare “Can’t stop world hunger altogether [assuming that’s your ultimate objective], so I should stop donating anything towards that goal.”
People care, at least more than we allow ourselves to think from within our protective cynical bubble.
To stand up for my values and denounce all the shit I hate here in an articulate, reasoned manner. But I’m very much not up to the task, and this makes me feel frustrated and miserable. And angry at my own impotence in the matter.
I think it’s important to separate out preferences and predictions, and try to limit values to the first. If you want to do something about posts you think should be responded to civilly, send them to me and I’ll take a look.
That said...
You gentlemen can probably guess as to which ones of you I mean by this.
I feel like I should point out that I put about 20% probability that I’m included in this. In general, people are not as good at guessing this sort of information as you would expect.
denounce all the shit I hate here in an articulate, reasoned manner. But I’m very much not up to the task, and this makes me feel frustrated and miserable. And angry at my own impotence in the matter.
Can you just write a single big manifesto of why LessWrong is shit, and then link to it all the time?
If you want to leave this board, but suspect you lack the willpower to do so, then there’s a better way than Suicide By Cop. Just scramble your password, add a firewall filter for LW (or a new “lesswrong.com 127.0.0.1″ entry in your hosts file) and be done with it.
No need to burn the commons on your way out.
If what you’re looking for are reassurances, PMs to those you’ve positively interacted with are the way to achieve that (no bystander effect, less drama etc.).
If, however, you’re drunk, um, don’t comment while drunk? Yea, I’m not too good with that one either.
This is meant as honest advice since IIRC I’ve upvoted you a number of times. (If I hadn’t read Why Our Kind Can’t Cooperate I might have gone for “Don’t cry. You know, like a girl.” Luckily I have, so I didn’t.)
Yeah.
I feel like I have a duty before a community that I see massive potential in. To stand up for my values and denounce all the shit I hate here in an articulate, reasoned manner. But I’m very much not up to the task, and this makes me feel frustrated and miserable. And angry at my own impotence in the matter.
It’d be a big amount of work to even call out the most egregious shitty shit here on a regular basis, with some citations and explanations for why I did so. And it feels like people hardly even care.
Then collect the worst examples and make an article of them. Preferably the ones that were upvoted (because if they were downvoted it means the community already disagrees with them). If the situation is so horrible, you should have an easy job. Just create a text file on your desktop, and anytimes something pisses you off, put the permalink there. Wait until you have enough material (please, don’t make it a series of short articles), then process it.
If the things are really so horrible, is the explanation even necessary? Just give a dozen citations, which prove it wasn’t a one-time event, and that’s it. Preferably they should be citations of different people.
If you want to make a drama, please put some work into it. Or use your rationality and outsource the job—take 10 of your most ideologically close friends and ask them to spend one afternoon trying to find the most horrible upvoted comments, so that you can write a critical article.
I understand. However, there isn’t some binary pass/fail criterion. This community can become incrementally better (obligatory “less wrong”) or worse. Your contributions are helping steer it along a good path (ahem, usually).
If you’ve set extremely ambitious goals for yourself (“I will make this community live up to its full potential”), and those then stop you from pursuing more realistic milestones along that trajectory, then you’ve shot yourself in the foot:
The perfect is the enemy of the good, and all that. Compare “Can’t stop world hunger altogether [assuming that’s your ultimate objective], so I should stop donating anything towards that goal.”
People care, at least more than we allow ourselves to think from within our protective cynical bubble.
I think it’s important to separate out preferences and predictions, and try to limit values to the first. If you want to do something about posts you think should be responded to civilly, send them to me and I’ll take a look.
That said...
I feel like I should point out that I put about 20% probability that I’m included in this. In general, people are not as good at guessing this sort of information as you would expect.
Can you just write a single big manifesto of why LessWrong is shit, and then link to it all the time?
I’d really prefer he didn’t. This practice would make lesswrong worse, not better.
Calling people “smug, condescending fascist fucks” is not expressing yourself in an articulate, reasoned manner.
Did you not read the sentence immediately after?
I don’t think that community exists anymore.
As far as I can tell, they don’t.
I’ve heard that’s one of the common symptoms.