I’m a young female and like some other women in the comments, I’d like to say that I in general approve of high barriers to entry for a community like Less Wrong. Well, that might be too much of a simplification—I prefer optimal barriers of entry, and in the case of LW, I think it should be pretty high, and if that can be achieved purely psychologically, then that’s great. But I think warmth/fun/kindness (which we’re seeing a lot more of recently and which Eliezer always had to begin with IMO) isn’t going to bring down that barrier enough to justify being cold just to keep up high standards. In short, I don’t think there’s a need to fear that we’re becoming too nice, even though we are becoming way nicer and posts like LW_Women encourage us to be even more nice.
It is a good idea to have a screening process so that only people who would enjoy and contribute to the community eventually join it, and if it’s self-selecting rather than explicit, all the better. And as sad as it might be, it is likely that the set of people who could genuinely help Less Wrong achieve its goals and become more effective is skewed male, and it’s likely that the reasons for this can’t be solved through social campaigns. Probably biology’s a bitch as usual and higher male variance in IQ means that smart people are disproportionately male (it’s a horrible tragedy that mentally impaired people are also disproportionately male).
That doesn’t mean that the set of potential LWers has the same degree of gender skew as the set of actual LWers though—at a guess I’d say the percentage of women in physics, math, and CS, while low, is higher than the percentage of women here at LW. So we could and probably should be doing more not to put off the kind of women who could contribute meaningfully. But the way LW goes about attracting women shouldn’t involve strict taboos on controversial topics or greater inclusiveness in general—it should be more targeted than that. After all, not-quite-as-insane-as-everywhere-else discussions about controversial topics are a big part of why we keep coming back here!
I know that when I first came to LW, I was considered “amusing”, “immature”, and “charming,” which I probably was, since I was 15 at the time. I didn’t comment for years afterward, and rarely comment now, since I rarely have much to contribute. But what put me off of LW for a while was not nastiness—I actually see very little of that, and very often see overt racism and sexism downvoted to oblivion. What put me off was massive walls of text. People digging through academic literature to prove a minor side point in a tangential discussion that spawned from an unrelated topic. People writing comments with corrections longer than the posts themselves. Throwaway jokes that required advanced mathematics to understand (at levels that women are less likely to reach, too). That’s what put me off of LW, and that is probably what puts off most people who think to join, men or women. And I don’t believe that’s a bad thing. People are less likely to litter in a beautiful and pristine neighborhood.
That being said, even though diluting the group too much and reaching out too far is a bad idea, based on what I’ve read from the Overcoming Bias days, this community has improved a whole lot at being less nasty and shutting up about how to manipulate people into sex, and hasn’t suffered nearly as much in terms of how thoughtful and intelligent the regular posters are. I’d buy that the average IQ has dropped since then, probably since the average age has also dropped—but even though we don’t want a community with the same demographics as the general population, ten geniuses is also not much of a community. And if the community does start off being run by geniuses, the high standard of discourse combined with some judicious moderation should be enough to attract and retain only those who can meet that high standard. Being nasty to people on top of that is too much of an impediment and may keep the community too small, too insular, too stagnant.
I’m a young female and like some other women in the comments, I’d like to say that I in general approve of high barriers to entry for a community like Less Wrong. Well, that might be too much of a simplification—I prefer optimal barriers of entry, and in the case of LW, I think it should be pretty high, and if that can be achieved purely psychologically, then that’s great. But I think warmth/fun/kindness (which we’re seeing a lot more of recently and which Eliezer always had to begin with IMO) isn’t going to bring down that barrier enough to justify being cold just to keep up high standards. In short, I don’t think there’s a need to fear that we’re becoming too nice, even though we are becoming way nicer and posts like LW_Women encourage us to be even more nice.
It is a good idea to have a screening process so that only people who would enjoy and contribute to the community eventually join it, and if it’s self-selecting rather than explicit, all the better. And as sad as it might be, it is likely that the set of people who could genuinely help Less Wrong achieve its goals and become more effective is skewed male, and it’s likely that the reasons for this can’t be solved through social campaigns. Probably biology’s a bitch as usual and higher male variance in IQ means that smart people are disproportionately male (it’s a horrible tragedy that mentally impaired people are also disproportionately male).
That doesn’t mean that the set of potential LWers has the same degree of gender skew as the set of actual LWers though—at a guess I’d say the percentage of women in physics, math, and CS, while low, is higher than the percentage of women here at LW. So we could and probably should be doing more not to put off the kind of women who could contribute meaningfully. But the way LW goes about attracting women shouldn’t involve strict taboos on controversial topics or greater inclusiveness in general—it should be more targeted than that. After all, not-quite-as-insane-as-everywhere-else discussions about controversial topics are a big part of why we keep coming back here!
I know that when I first came to LW, I was considered “amusing”, “immature”, and “charming,” which I probably was, since I was 15 at the time. I didn’t comment for years afterward, and rarely comment now, since I rarely have much to contribute. But what put me off of LW for a while was not nastiness—I actually see very little of that, and very often see overt racism and sexism downvoted to oblivion. What put me off was massive walls of text. People digging through academic literature to prove a minor side point in a tangential discussion that spawned from an unrelated topic. People writing comments with corrections longer than the posts themselves. Throwaway jokes that required advanced mathematics to understand (at levels that women are less likely to reach, too). That’s what put me off of LW, and that is probably what puts off most people who think to join, men or women. And I don’t believe that’s a bad thing. People are less likely to litter in a beautiful and pristine neighborhood.
That being said, even though diluting the group too much and reaching out too far is a bad idea, based on what I’ve read from the Overcoming Bias days, this community has improved a whole lot at being less nasty and shutting up about how to manipulate people into sex, and hasn’t suffered nearly as much in terms of how thoughtful and intelligent the regular posters are. I’d buy that the average IQ has dropped since then, probably since the average age has also dropped—but even though we don’t want a community with the same demographics as the general population, ten geniuses is also not much of a community. And if the community does start off being run by geniuses, the high standard of discourse combined with some judicious moderation should be enough to attract and retain only those who can meet that high standard. Being nasty to people on top of that is too much of an impediment and may keep the community too small, too insular, too stagnant.