I mostly agree, but one part seems a bit off and I feel like I should be on the record about it:
Benquo is in the top 100 LW users of all time by karma, which seems to be at least as much selection for rationality as being in math grad school is selection for mathematical ability and training.
It’s evidence that I’m a top example of the particular sort of rationality culture that LW is clustered around, and I think that’s enough to make the argument you’re trying to make, but being good at getting upvotes for writing about rationality is different in some important ways from being rational, in ways not captured by the analogy to math grad school.
I agree the analogy is not perfect, but I do think it’s better than you’re suggesting; in particular, it seems to me like going to math grad school as opposed to doing other things that require high mathematical ability (like quantitative finance, or going to physics grad school, or various styles of programming) is related to “writing about rationality rather than doing other things with rationality.” Like, many of the most rational people I know don’t ever post on LW because that doesn’t connect to their goals; similarly, many of the most mathematically talented people I know didn’t go to math grad school, because they ran the numbers on doing it and they didn’t add up.
But to restate the core point, I was trying to get at the question of “who do you think is worthy of not being sarcastic towards?”, because if the answer is something like “yeah, using sarcasm on the core LW userbase seems proper” this seems highly related to the question of “is this person making LW better or worse?”.
I mostly agree, but one part seems a bit off and I feel like I should be on the record about it:
It’s evidence that I’m a top example of the particular sort of rationality culture that LW is clustered around, and I think that’s enough to make the argument you’re trying to make, but being good at getting upvotes for writing about rationality is different in some important ways from being rational, in ways not captured by the analogy to math grad school.
I agree the analogy is not perfect, but I do think it’s better than you’re suggesting; in particular, it seems to me like going to math grad school as opposed to doing other things that require high mathematical ability (like quantitative finance, or going to physics grad school, or various styles of programming) is related to “writing about rationality rather than doing other things with rationality.” Like, many of the most rational people I know don’t ever post on LW because that doesn’t connect to their goals; similarly, many of the most mathematically talented people I know didn’t go to math grad school, because they ran the numbers on doing it and they didn’t add up.
But to restate the core point, I was trying to get at the question of “who do you think is worthy of not being sarcastic towards?”, because if the answer is something like “yeah, using sarcasm on the core LW userbase seems proper” this seems highly related to the question of “is this person making LW better or worse?”.