My personal take is that SSC totally counts as a dojo (or at least “serious practice”) for Scott. The comments don’t seem like they especially count as a dojo. Some individuals in the comments who are more effortful/careful may count as doing serious practice.
If we’re doing the martial arts metaphor, I think it’s more like Scott is (seriously) practicing Tai Chi on a street corner where anyone can join, rather than anything systematized.
Not sure about rationality, but blogging certainly makes you better at writing what your audience wants. That’s not always a good thing though. I’m pretty sure Scott’s audience has made him more political, he wasn’t that way before. It’s like one of those pranks where all students agree to act attentive when the professor walks right and act distracted when the professor walks left, so by the end of the lecture the professor is huddled in the right corner without knowing why. A better test of rationality would be noticing when it happens to you :-)
My personal take is that SSC totally counts as a dojo (or at least “serious practice”) for Scott. The comments don’t seem like they especially count as a dojo. Some individuals in the comments who are more effortful/careful may count as doing serious practice.
If we’re doing the martial arts metaphor, I think it’s more like Scott is (seriously) practicing Tai Chi on a street corner where anyone can join, rather than anything systematized.
More generally, commenting isn’t a good way to train oneself as a rationalist, but blogging is.
Not sure about rationality, but blogging certainly makes you better at writing what your audience wants. That’s not always a good thing though. I’m pretty sure Scott’s audience has made him more political, he wasn’t that way before. It’s like one of those pranks where all students agree to act attentive when the professor walks right and act distracted when the professor walks left, so by the end of the lecture the professor is huddled in the right corner without knowing why. A better test of rationality would be noticing when it happens to you :-)
Never heard of a prank like this, this sound weird.