I think a different perspective is “should we reify the judgments of popular, high status and locally powerful LessWrong users of virtues and vices as site norms, and provide a user guide as to how to conform to that vision of virtue?”
My first ever comment on here was dumb and got downvoted. I self corrected, bumbled along, and eventually sort of found a way to fit in that suits me OK.
I think local social pressure helped me to do that, and if you don’t respect the extant community enough to think you have a lot to learn from them, then what are you doing hanging out with them?
But I think it’s, I don’t know, a sense of fun and excitement and usefulness and novelty that makes a user see the sense of rationalist virtue and want to fit in harmoniously in the ecosystem.
So any such site norms, I think, need to be about keeping it fun and interesting for old and new users both!
Sometimes it feels like all the virtue and site norm posts are a bit stodgy/threatening/frustrated-sounding, although to be fair some of that attitude is warranted.
But on the whole I guess I would hope any such site norms would be positive and lighthearted and inspiring.
Like, I would love to see things like a list of posts and comments and dialogs that people think exemplify the True Spirit of LessWrong, and why they like them. Concrete examples of LessWrong at its best would be interesting in their own right, and I think they do more to help set people in the right direction.
So any such site norms, I think, need to be about keeping it fun and interesting for old and new users both!
Sometimes it feels like all the virtue and site norm posts are a bit stodgy/threatening/frustrated-sounding, although to be fair some of that attitude is warranted.
+1. The thing I miss most about when EY stopped posting on this site is that his nonfiction writing is orders of magnitude more enjoyable than that of almost everyone else.
Nowadays I often dread the frequent walls of text in posts and comments, which are presumably written from their authors’ commendable desire to express themselves as accurately as possible. I wish more of them also had a commensurate desire (and skill) to delight their readers.
I think a different perspective is “should we reify the judgments of popular, high status and locally powerful LessWrong users of virtues and vices as site norms, and provide a user guide as to how to conform to that vision of virtue?”
My first ever comment on here was dumb and got downvoted. I self corrected, bumbled along, and eventually sort of found a way to fit in that suits me OK.
I think local social pressure helped me to do that, and if you don’t respect the extant community enough to think you have a lot to learn from them, then what are you doing hanging out with them?
But I think it’s, I don’t know, a sense of fun and excitement and usefulness and novelty that makes a user see the sense of rationalist virtue and want to fit in harmoniously in the ecosystem.
So any such site norms, I think, need to be about keeping it fun and interesting for old and new users both!
Sometimes it feels like all the virtue and site norm posts are a bit stodgy/threatening/frustrated-sounding, although to be fair some of that attitude is warranted.
But on the whole I guess I would hope any such site norms would be positive and lighthearted and inspiring.
Like, I would love to see things like a list of posts and comments and dialogs that people think exemplify the True Spirit of LessWrong, and why they like them. Concrete examples of LessWrong at its best would be interesting in their own right, and I think they do more to help set people in the right direction.
+1. The thing I miss most about when EY stopped posting on this site is that his nonfiction writing is orders of magnitude more enjoyable than that of almost everyone else.
Nowadays I often dread the frequent walls of text in posts and comments, which are presumably written from their authors’ commendable desire to express themselves as accurately as possible. I wish more of them also had a commensurate desire (and skill) to delight their readers.