I looked at how exactly David got the 1000 karma points here, curious whether there were some super popular articles I missed. The answer seems to be that he created lots of Open Threads and similar, each of them getting a few upvotes. The second most frequent things is links to external articles (including two articles about why you shouldn’t buy Bitcoins, written in 2011 and 2014, heh).
Looking for a text he wrote that isn’t a short comment on a linked external page, I found “Attempt to explain Bayes without much maths, please review”, a reasonable short non-technical summary of what Bayesianism means, currently at 17 karma.
Plus lots of comments, most written at 2014 or sooner, and many of those are quite good! (Then he got downvoted in debates about chiropractors and neoreaction, and then he quit. Returned briefly in 2017 when I triggered him by my comment on his edits at Wikipedia page about LessWrong.)
I think David has a strong sense that it’s important to put faith in established authorities and he correctly assess that LessWrong is not about following established authority. It’s the same clash that gets him to write against crypto currency.
To me, this seems like the essence of RationalWiki. Rationality = what the mainstream authorities approve of. Going beyond that, that’s crazy talk, and needs to be called out. For example, the RW page on LW cannot resist pointing out that the Sequences present “many-worlds (a mainstream, but by no means universally accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics) as if it was proven fact”. Like, the authorities don’t even oppose this, they merely don’t universally accept it, and RationalWiki already needs to warn the reader about the heresy.
Dunno, seems to me that David is really passionate about things, and he means well, and he tried to like LessWrong despite all its faults… but he has a very strong need to be right / to be on the right side, and he takes it really hard when something wrong happens, he can’t tolerate disagreement even if it’s in the past and no one other than him cares anymore. Basilisk is a history, it was scary at first and then it was boring and then it got annoying; neoreaction is a history, we flirted with them a bit and then they got boring and annoying and we showed them the door; we don’t think about them anymore. For David, it’s probably still alive, still worth talking about, he needs a closure. It must be documented on Wikipedia that he was right and we were wrong. Even his bullying of Scott, it’s kinda like when religious fanatics are harassing an apostate; from their own perspective they mean well, it is tough love, they are trying to make him repent and save his soul! (Except, oops, now David is officially banned from editing the Wikipedia article on Scott.)
Of course, this is all mind-reading, and I may be completely wrong. But it’s my current best guess. I know David is a good guy in his own story, now I believe I got a glimpse of it, and it just makes me feel sad. I wish him well, and I also wish he could get over LessWrong and the rationalist community already. Though that seems unlikely to happen; internet is a small place, we will keep bumping into each other.
LW cannot resist pointing out that the Sequences present “many-worlds (a mainstream, but by no means universally accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics) as if it was proven fact”. Like, the authorities don’t even oppose this, they merely don’t universally accept it, and RationalWiki already needs to warn the reader about the heresy
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Knowing how sure science is about it’s claims is an important part of science. A member of the reading public who believes that the interpretation of quantum mechanics is a complex subject that even the experts don’t understand has a better understanding than someone who thinks MWI is 99.999% certain.… even if MWI is correct.
....warn the reader about the heresy
Science says there are a number of possible answers, lesswrong was there is one...who is being more religious?
Suppose you have three hundred scientists, and three competing interpretations. Hundred scientists believe S1, hundred scientists believe S2, and hundred scientists believe S3. LW believes S1.
I guess my point is that I wouldn’t consider it necessary to add a disclaimer to the three hundred scientists. Therefore I don’t consider it necessary to add such disclaimer to LW.
But of course, adding disclaimers to everyone is also a consistent opinion.
To me it seems like a funny misson creep, in context of RationalWiki: start with calling out pseudoscience, end with calling out people who agree with some-but-not-all mainstream scientists.
If you have a hundred scientists scattered through the world who believe S1 , and have nothing else in common, that’s one thing. If they all live together, know each other and go to the same church, then there is reason to believe their acceptance of S1 is groupthink, and not pure scientific objectivity.
I looked at how exactly David got the 1000 karma points here, curious whether there were some super popular articles I missed. The answer seems to be that he created lots of Open Threads and similar, each of them getting a few upvotes. The second most frequent things is links to external articles (including two articles about why you shouldn’t buy Bitcoins, written in 2011 and 2014, heh).
Looking for a text he wrote that isn’t a short comment on a linked external page, I found “Attempt to explain Bayes without much maths, please review”, a reasonable short non-technical summary of what Bayesianism means, currently at 17 karma.
Plus lots of comments, most written at 2014 or sooner, and many of those are quite good! (Then he got downvoted in debates about chiropractors and neoreaction, and then he quit. Returned briefly in 2017 when I triggered him by my comment on his edits at Wikipedia page about LessWrong.)
To me, this seems like the essence of RationalWiki. Rationality = what the mainstream authorities approve of. Going beyond that, that’s crazy talk, and needs to be called out. For example, the RW page on LW cannot resist pointing out that the Sequences present “many-worlds (a mainstream, but by no means universally accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics) as if it was proven fact”. Like, the authorities don’t even oppose this, they merely don’t universally accept it, and RationalWiki already needs to warn the reader about the heresy.
Dunno, seems to me that David is really passionate about things, and he means well, and he tried to like LessWrong despite all its faults… but he has a very strong need to be right / to be on the right side, and he takes it really hard when something wrong happens, he can’t tolerate disagreement even if it’s in the past and no one other than him cares anymore. Basilisk is a history, it was scary at first and then it was boring and then it got annoying; neoreaction is a history, we flirted with them a bit and then they got boring and annoying and we showed them the door; we don’t think about them anymore. For David, it’s probably still alive, still worth talking about, he needs a closure. It must be documented on Wikipedia that he was right and we were wrong. Even his bullying of Scott, it’s kinda like when religious fanatics are harassing an apostate; from their own perspective they mean well, it is tough love, they are trying to make him repent and save his soul! (Except, oops, now David is officially banned from editing the Wikipedia article on Scott.)
Of course, this is all mind-reading, and I may be completely wrong. But it’s my current best guess. I know David is a good guy in his own story, now I believe I got a glimpse of it, and it just makes me feel sad. I wish him well, and I also wish he could get over LessWrong and the rationalist community already. Though that seems unlikely to happen; internet is a small place, we will keep bumping into each other.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Knowing how sure science is about it’s claims is an important part of science. A member of the reading public who believes that the interpretation of quantum mechanics is a complex subject that even the experts don’t understand has a better understanding than someone who thinks MWI is 99.999% certain.… even if MWI is correct.
Science says there are a number of possible answers, lesswrong was there is one...who is being more religious?
Suppose you have three hundred scientists, and three competing interpretations. Hundred scientists believe S1, hundred scientists believe S2, and hundred scientists believe S3. LW believes S1.
I guess my point is that I wouldn’t consider it necessary to add a disclaimer to the three hundred scientists. Therefore I don’t consider it necessary to add such disclaimer to LW.
But of course, adding disclaimers to everyone is also a consistent opinion.
To me it seems like a funny misson creep, in context of RationalWiki: start with calling out pseudoscience, end with calling out people who agree with some-but-not-all mainstream scientists.
If you have a hundred scientists scattered through the world who believe S1 , and have nothing else in common, that’s one thing. If they all live together, know each other and go to the same church, then there is reason to believe their acceptance of S1 is groupthink, and not pure scientific objectivity.