Was the claim maybe something of the form “eh, can’t win ’em all, but relax, things don’t seem all that bad”?
That was broadly my point, the main reason why I didn’t say that was because I recognise that some people have unusual preferences that make decision make sense that would appear irrational from the standpoint of someone assuming normal preferences.
I’ve got my frustrations with the community too, for example, when I tried to convince people to take hypothetical seriously. Or when it was clear that the community was in decline, but it was impossible to take action on it. That made me go away for a while and engage less with the community.
But, I decided to give it another go after doing a lot of debating and just learning a lot more in general and I’ve found that I’m now getting better responses. I can now predict the most likely ways that my posts will be misunderstood and throw in the appropriate disclaimers. There are still lots of ways in which we aren’t rational, but that is why we often call ourselves aspiring rationalists and the site Less Wrong. I agree that we still have large flaws in an absolute sense, but I haven’t been able to find another site where I can go to have a discussion that is better.
Maybe its different for you, maybe your time is best spent elsewhere, but your metric does not feel like a very accurate health of the site. Like, if I’m being really honest, I’m tempted to go and upvote the comment right now just to diffuse the situation—but is that what you’re trying to measure? The votes on comments are much less reliable than the votes on posts anyway because many people read the post, browse a few comments, then consider themselves finished on the post and never come back.
That was broadly my point, the main reason why I didn’t say that was because I recognise that some people have unusual preferences that make decision make sense that would appear irrational from the standpoint of someone assuming normal preferences.
I’ve got my frustrations with the community too, for example, when I tried to convince people to take hypothetical seriously. Or when it was clear that the community was in decline, but it was impossible to take action on it. That made me go away for a while and engage less with the community.
But, I decided to give it another go after doing a lot of debating and just learning a lot more in general and I’ve found that I’m now getting better responses. I can now predict the most likely ways that my posts will be misunderstood and throw in the appropriate disclaimers. There are still lots of ways in which we aren’t rational, but that is why we often call ourselves aspiring rationalists and the site Less Wrong. I agree that we still have large flaws in an absolute sense, but I haven’t been able to find another site where I can go to have a discussion that is better.
Maybe its different for you, maybe your time is best spent elsewhere, but your metric does not feel like a very accurate health of the site. Like, if I’m being really honest, I’m tempted to go and upvote the comment right now just to diffuse the situation—but is that what you’re trying to measure? The votes on comments are much less reliable than the votes on posts anyway because many people read the post, browse a few comments, then consider themselves finished on the post and never come back.