I post on LessWrong because I want people to evaluate my arguments on whether they will make the world better or not. I agree that there are many parts of the internet where I can post and people will play the “does this word give me the bad feels” game. I post on LessWrong to get away from that nonsense.
I recognize that my comment was not kind toward you, and I’m sorry for that. But I posted it anyway because I’m more concerned with people seeing this post coming away with a strongly negative view of LW. I’ve already had discussions with someone who has these associations based on much weaker reasons before, and I believe they still hold a negative view of LW to this day, even though 99+% of the content has virtually no relation to gender issues.
My claim is that whatever benefit comes from discussing this topic is not large enough to justify the cost, not that the benefit doesn’t exist. I don’t expect the dating world to get any better, but I don’t think LW should get involved in that fight. There are many topics we would be more effective at solving and that don’t have negative side effects.
(And I’ve listened to every Rationally Speaking episode since Julia became the solo host.)
Thank you for the apology. I understand your motivations better now.
I disagree that the dating world cannot get any better. I think this is an incredibly neglected and moderately tractable area.
Here’s why I still think there is positive utility to discussing this -
1. The association exists because of Scott Alexander’s post. That post gets tons of views and is frankly a terrible introduction to rationalist thinking. A new reader can easily see it as an identity politics post and dismiss rationalism.
2. We best sell rationalism by showing how we think, not that we bite bullets, lots of other communities bite bullets. I try to highlight aspects of how rationalists think about problems in each post, so that visitors get a better image of us (experimentation, random trials, scholarship, etc.). Luke Progs romance posts are a great example.
If the public associated rationalist stuff w/ Luke Progs work there would be a better argument, but the Scott Alexander post is the real face.
Finally, google searches for rationality/less wrong/slate star codex are in a gradual decline, so the value of self-censorship to achieve mainstream adoption is lower. The barriers to mainstream adoption probably are not the dating stuff.
I did replace mating with dating throughout the post for availability heuristic reasons.
I recognize that my comment was not kind toward you, and I’m sorry for that. But I posted it anyway because I’m more concerned with people seeing this post coming away with a strongly negative view of LW. I’ve already had discussions with someone who has these associations based on much weaker reasons before, and I believe they still hold a negative view of LW to this day, even though 99+% of the content has virtually no relation to gender issues.
My claim is that whatever benefit comes from discussing this topic is not large enough to justify the cost, not that the benefit doesn’t exist. I don’t expect the dating world to get any better, but I don’t think LW should get involved in that fight. There are many topics we would be more effective at solving and that don’t have negative side effects.
(And I’ve listened to every Rationally Speaking episode since Julia became the solo host.)
Thank you for the apology. I understand your motivations better now.
I disagree that the dating world cannot get any better. I think this is an incredibly neglected and moderately tractable area.
Here’s why I still think there is positive utility to discussing this -
1. The association exists because of Scott Alexander’s post. That post gets tons of views and is frankly a terrible introduction to rationalist thinking. A new reader can easily see it as an identity politics post and dismiss rationalism.
2. We best sell rationalism by showing how we think, not that we bite bullets, lots of other communities bite bullets. I try to highlight aspects of how rationalists think about problems in each post, so that visitors get a better image of us (experimentation, random trials, scholarship, etc.). Luke Progs romance posts are a great example.
If the public associated rationalist stuff w/ Luke Progs work there would be a better argument, but the Scott Alexander post is the real face.
Finally, google searches for rationality/less wrong/slate star codex are in a gradual decline, so the value of self-censorship to achieve mainstream adoption is lower. The barriers to mainstream adoption probably are not the dating stuff.
I did replace mating with dating throughout the post for availability heuristic reasons.