I think it’s that you post a lot of questions and not a lot of content. Less Wrong is predisposed to upvoting high-content responses. I haven’t had an account for very long, but I have lurked for ages. That’s my impression, anyways. I recognize that since I haven’t actually pulled comment karma data from the site and analyzed it, I could be totally off-base.
Maybe when you ask questions, use this form:
[This is a general response to the post]
and
[This is what is confusing me]
but
[I thought about it and I think I have the answer, is this correct?] or [I thought about it, came up with these conclusions, but rejected them for reasons listed here, I’m still confused]
EDIT: I just looked at your submitted history. You do post content in Main, apparently, but your posts seem to run counter to the popular ideas here. There is bias, and LessWrong has a lot of ideas deemed “settled.” Effective Altruism appears to be one, and you have posted arguments against it. I’ve also seen some of your posts jump to conclusions without explaining your explicit reasons. LWers seem to appreciate having concepts reduced as much as possible to make reasoning more explicit.
There is bias, and LessWrong has a lot of ideas deemed “settled.”
Any group has a lot of ideas that are settled. If you want to convince any scientific minded group that the Aristoteles four elements is true, then you have to hit a high bar for not getting rejected. If anything LW allows a wide array of contrarian points.
LW’s second highest voted post is Holden’s post against MIRI and is contrarian to core ideas of this community in the same sense as a post criticizing EA is. The difference is that the post actualy goes deep and make a substantive argument.
I want to say that that’s what I was trying to imply, but that might be backwards-rationalization. I do have the impression that contrarian ideas are accepted and lauded if and only if they’re presented with the reasoning standards of the community. I’ll be honest: LW does strike me as far-fetched in some respects BUT I recognize that I haven’t done enough reading on those subjects to have an informed opinion. I’ve lurked but am not an ingrained member of the community and can’t give a detailed analysis of the standards. Only my impression.
AND I realize that this sounds defensive, and I know there’s no real reason for my ego to be wounded. I appreciate your input! I hope that my advice to Clarity wasn’t too far off the mark. I tried to be clear about my advice being based on impressions more than data.
EDIT: removed “biased,” replaced with “far-fetched.”
Obviously it has reasoning standards. They are much higher than the average person might expect, because that’s one of the goals of the community.
Bias was an poor word to use, and I retract my use of the term. I mean that as a relatively new participant, there are ideas that seem far-fetched because I have not examined the arguments for them. I admit that this is nothing more than my visceral reaction. Until I examine each issue thoroughly, I won’t be able to say anything but “that viscerally strikes me as biased.” Cryonics, for instance, is a conclusion that seems far-fetched because I have a very poor understanding of biology, and no exposure to the discussion around it. Without a better background in the science and philosophy of cryonics, I have no way of incorporating casual acceptance of the idea into my own conclusion. I recognize that, admit it, and am apparently not being clear about that fact. In trying to express empathy with a visceral reaction of disbelief, I misused the word “bias” and will be more clear in the future.
On the second point: I understand that there’s a cost to treating every post with the same rigor. Posts that are poorly reasoned, and come to potentially dangerous conclusions, should be examined more rigorously. Posts that are just as bad, but whose conclusions are less dangerous, can probably be taken less seriously. Even so...someone who makes many such arguments, with a mix of dangerous and less-dangerous conclusions, might see a lack of negative feedback as positive feedback. That’s an issue in itself, but newcomers wouldn’t be in a position to recognize that.
Cryonics is not a discussion that’s primarily about biology. A lot of outsider will want to either think that cryonics works or that it doesn’t.
On LW there a current that we don’t make binary judgements like that but instead reason with probabilities. So thinking that there a 20% chance that cryonics works is enough for people to go out and buy cryonics insurance because of the huge value that cryonics has if it succeeds.
That’s radically different than most people outside of LW think.
Cryonics is not a discussion that’s primarily about biology.
Well, the biological aspect is “where exactly in the body is ‘me’ located”?
For example, many people on LW seem to assume that the whole ‘me’ is in the head; so you can just freeze the head, and feed the rest to the worms. Maybe that’s a wrong idea; maybe the ‘me’ is much more distributed in the body, and the head is merely a coordinating organ, plus a center of a few things that need to work really fast. Maybe if the future science will revive the head and connect it to some cloned/artificial average human body, we will see the original personality replaced by more or less an average personality; perhaps keeping the memories of the original, but unable to empathise with the hobbies or values of the original.
For example, many people on LW seem to assume that the whole ‘me’ is in the head; so you can just freeze the head, and feed the rest to the worms.
Whether you need to freeze the whole body or whether the head is enough is a meaningful debate, but it has little to do with why a lot of people oppose cryonics.
At this stage, I can see an argument for freezing the gut, or at least samples of the gut, so as to get the microbiome. Anyone know about reviving frozen microbes?
There is evidence for and against cryonics that I KNOW exists, but I haven’t parsed most of it yet.
If I come to the conclusion that cryonics insurance is worth betting on, I am not sure I can get my spouse on board. Since he’d ultimately be in charge of what happens to my remains, AND we have an agreement to be open about our financial decisions, him being on board is mandatory.
If I come to the conclusion that cryonics is worth betting on, I might feel morally obligated to proselytize about it. That has massive social costs for me.
I’m freaked out by the concept because very intelligent people in my life have dismissed the concept as “idiotic,” and apparently cryonics believers make researchers in the field of cryogenics very uncomfortable.
Basically, it’s a whole mess of things to come to terms with. The spouse thing is the biggest.
I think those concerns are understandable but the thing that makes LW special is that discourse here often ignores uncomfortable barriers of thought like this. That can feel weird for outsiders.
I think it’s that you post a lot of questions and not a lot of content. Less Wrong is predisposed to upvoting high-content responses. I haven’t had an account for very long, but I have lurked for ages. That’s my impression, anyways. I recognize that since I haven’t actually pulled comment karma data from the site and analyzed it, I could be totally off-base.
Maybe when you ask questions, use this form:
[This is a general response to the post] and [This is what is confusing me] but [I thought about it and I think I have the answer, is this correct?] or [I thought about it, came up with these conclusions, but rejected them for reasons listed here, I’m still confused]
EDIT: I just looked at your submitted history. You do post content in Main, apparently, but your posts seem to run counter to the popular ideas here. There is bias, and LessWrong has a lot of ideas deemed “settled.” Effective Altruism appears to be one, and you have posted arguments against it. I’ve also seen some of your posts jump to conclusions without explaining your explicit reasons. LWers seem to appreciate having concepts reduced as much as possible to make reasoning more explicit.
Any group has a lot of ideas that are settled. If you want to convince any scientific minded group that the Aristoteles four elements is true, then you have to hit a high bar for not getting rejected. If anything LW allows a wide array of contrarian points.
LW’s second highest voted post is Holden’s post against MIRI and is contrarian to core ideas of this community in the same sense as a post criticizing EA is. The difference is that the post actualy goes deep and make a substantive argument.
I want to say that that’s what I was trying to imply, but that might be backwards-rationalization. I do have the impression that contrarian ideas are accepted and lauded if and only if they’re presented with the reasoning standards of the community. I’ll be honest: LW does strike me as far-fetched in some respects BUT I recognize that I haven’t done enough reading on those subjects to have an informed opinion. I’ve lurked but am not an ingrained member of the community and can’t give a detailed analysis of the standards. Only my impression.
AND I realize that this sounds defensive, and I know there’s no real reason for my ego to be wounded. I appreciate your input! I hope that my advice to Clarity wasn’t too far off the mark. I tried to be clear about my advice being based on impressions more than data.
EDIT: removed “biased,” replaced with “far-fetched.”
Yes, LW does have reasoning standards. That’s part of what being refining the art of human rationality is about.
What do you mean with “biased”? That LW is different than mainstream society in the ideas it values?
Do you think it’s a bias to treat badly reasoned post which might result in people dying the differently than harmless badly reasoned posts?
Obviously it has reasoning standards. They are much higher than the average person might expect, because that’s one of the goals of the community.
Bias was an poor word to use, and I retract my use of the term. I mean that as a relatively new participant, there are ideas that seem far-fetched because I have not examined the arguments for them. I admit that this is nothing more than my visceral reaction. Until I examine each issue thoroughly, I won’t be able to say anything but “that viscerally strikes me as biased.” Cryonics, for instance, is a conclusion that seems far-fetched because I have a very poor understanding of biology, and no exposure to the discussion around it. Without a better background in the science and philosophy of cryonics, I have no way of incorporating casual acceptance of the idea into my own conclusion. I recognize that, admit it, and am apparently not being clear about that fact. In trying to express empathy with a visceral reaction of disbelief, I misused the word “bias” and will be more clear in the future.
On the second point: I understand that there’s a cost to treating every post with the same rigor. Posts that are poorly reasoned, and come to potentially dangerous conclusions, should be examined more rigorously. Posts that are just as bad, but whose conclusions are less dangerous, can probably be taken less seriously. Even so...someone who makes many such arguments, with a mix of dangerous and less-dangerous conclusions, might see a lack of negative feedback as positive feedback. That’s an issue in itself, but newcomers wouldn’t be in a position to recognize that.
Cryonics is not a discussion that’s primarily about biology. A lot of outsider will want to either think that cryonics works or that it doesn’t. On LW there a current that we don’t make binary judgements like that but instead reason with probabilities. So thinking that there a 20% chance that cryonics works is enough for people to go out and buy cryonics insurance because of the huge value that cryonics has if it succeeds. That’s radically different than most people outside of LW think.
Well, the biological aspect is “where exactly in the body is ‘me’ located”?
For example, many people on LW seem to assume that the whole ‘me’ is in the head; so you can just freeze the head, and feed the rest to the worms. Maybe that’s a wrong idea; maybe the ‘me’ is much more distributed in the body, and the head is merely a coordinating organ, plus a center of a few things that need to work really fast. Maybe if the future science will revive the head and connect it to some cloned/artificial average human body, we will see the original personality replaced by more or less an average personality; perhaps keeping the memories of the original, but unable to empathise with the hobbies or values of the original.
Whether you need to freeze the whole body or whether the head is enough is a meaningful debate, but it has little to do with why a lot of people oppose cryonics.
At this stage, I can see an argument for freezing the gut, or at least samples of the gut, so as to get the microbiome. Anyone know about reviving frozen microbes?
It’s not hard. IIRC people brought to life microbes which were frozen in permafrost tens of thousands of years ago.
I understand that; I’m still not comfortable enough with the discussion about cryonics to bet on it working.
Do you have a probability in your head about cryonics working or not working, or do you feel uncomfortable assigning a probability?
A little of both, I think.
There is evidence for and against cryonics that I KNOW exists, but I haven’t parsed most of it yet.
If I come to the conclusion that cryonics insurance is worth betting on, I am not sure I can get my spouse on board. Since he’d ultimately be in charge of what happens to my remains, AND we have an agreement to be open about our financial decisions, him being on board is mandatory.
If I come to the conclusion that cryonics is worth betting on, I might feel morally obligated to proselytize about it. That has massive social costs for me.
I’m freaked out by the concept because very intelligent people in my life have dismissed the concept as “idiotic,” and apparently cryonics believers make researchers in the field of cryogenics very uncomfortable.
Basically, it’s a whole mess of things to come to terms with. The spouse thing is the biggest.
I think those concerns are understandable but the thing that makes LW special is that discourse here often ignores uncomfortable barriers of thought like this. That can feel weird for outsiders.