One important difference between LW and SSC: Everyone knows that SSC is Scott’s blog. Scott is a dictator, and if he wants to announce his own opinions visibly, he can post them in a separate article, in a way no one else can compete with. It would be difficult to misrepresent Scott’s opinions by posting on SSC.
LW is a group blog (Eliezer is no longer active here). So in addition to talk about individual users who post here, it also makes sense to ask what does the “hive mind” think, i.e. what is the general consensus here. Especially because we talk here about Aumann agreement theorem, wisdom of crowds, etc. So people can be curious about the “wisdom of the LW crowd”.
Similarly, when a third party describes SSC, they cannot credibly accuse Scott of what someone else wrote in the comments; the dividing line between Scott and his comentariat is obvious. But it is quite easy to cherry-pick some LW comments and say “this is what the LW community actually believes”.
There were repeated attempts to create a fake image of what the LW community believes, coming as far as I know from two sources. First, various “SJWs” were offended that some opinions were not banned here, and that some topics were allowed to be discussed calmly. (It doesn’t matter whether the problematic opinion was a minority opinion, or even whether it was downvoted. The fact that it wasn’t immediately censored is enough to cause outrage.)
Second, the neoreactionary community decided to use these accusations as a recruitment tool, and they started spreading a rumor that the rationalist community indeed supports them. There was a time when they tried to make LW about neoreaction, by repeatedly creating discussion threads about themselves. Such as: “Political thread: neoreactionaries, tell me what do you find most rational about neoreaction”; obviously fishing for positive opinions. Then they used such threads as a “proof” that rationalists indeed find neoreaction very rational, etc. -- After some time they gave up and disappeared. Only Eugine remained here, creating endless sockpuppets for downvoting anti-nr comments, and upvoting pro-nr comments, persistently maintaining the illusion of neoreaction being overrepresented (or even represented) in the rationalist comminity.
tl;dr—on LW people can play astroturfing games about “what the rationalist community actually believes”, and it regularly happens, and it is very annoying for those who recognize they are being manipulated; on SSC such games don’t make sense, because Scott can make his opinion quite clear
Similarly, when a third party describes SSC, they cannot credibly accuse Scott of what someone else wrote in the comments; the dividing line between Scott and his comentariat is obvious.
They can accuse Scott of being the sort of fascist who would have a [cherry-picking two or three comments that aren’t completely in approval of the latest Salon thinkpiece] far-right extremist commentariat. And they do.
The best leaders are those their people hardly know exist. The next best is a leader who is loved and praised. Next comes the one who is feared. The worst one is the leader that is despised
One important difference between LW and SSC: Everyone knows that SSC is Scott’s blog. Scott is a dictator, and if he wants to announce his own opinions visibly, he can post them in a separate article, in a way no one else can compete with. It would be difficult to misrepresent Scott’s opinions by posting on SSC.
LW is a group blog (Eliezer is no longer active here). So in addition to talk about individual users who post here, it also makes sense to ask what does the “hive mind” think, i.e. what is the general consensus here. Especially because we talk here about Aumann agreement theorem, wisdom of crowds, etc. So people can be curious about the “wisdom of the LW crowd”.
Similarly, when a third party describes SSC, they cannot credibly accuse Scott of what someone else wrote in the comments; the dividing line between Scott and his comentariat is obvious. But it is quite easy to cherry-pick some LW comments and say “this is what the LW community actually believes”.
There were repeated attempts to create a fake image of what the LW community believes, coming as far as I know from two sources. First, various “SJWs” were offended that some opinions were not banned here, and that some topics were allowed to be discussed calmly. (It doesn’t matter whether the problematic opinion was a minority opinion, or even whether it was downvoted. The fact that it wasn’t immediately censored is enough to cause outrage.)
Second, the neoreactionary community decided to use these accusations as a recruitment tool, and they started spreading a rumor that the rationalist community indeed supports them. There was a time when they tried to make LW about neoreaction, by repeatedly creating discussion threads about themselves. Such as: “Political thread: neoreactionaries, tell me what do you find most rational about neoreaction”; obviously fishing for positive opinions. Then they used such threads as a “proof” that rationalists indeed find neoreaction very rational, etc. -- After some time they gave up and disappeared. Only Eugine remained here, creating endless sockpuppets for downvoting anti-nr comments, and upvoting pro-nr comments, persistently maintaining the illusion of neoreaction being overrepresented (or even represented) in the rationalist comminity.
tl;dr—on LW people can play astroturfing games about “what the rationalist community actually believes”, and it regularly happens, and it is very annoying for those who recognize they are being manipulated; on SSC such games don’t make sense, because Scott can make his opinion quite clear
They can accuse Scott of being the sort of fascist who would have a [cherry-picking two or three comments that aren’t completely in approval of the latest Salon thinkpiece] far-right extremist commentariat. And they do.
Yep, here is an example.
Can we elect a dictator?
I think we did.
This is the first I heard of that… I’m not sure the legitimacy of that in the eyes of long-time users.
-- Tao Te Ching