> (High confidence) I feel like the project of thinking more clearly has largely fallen by the wayside, and that we never did that great of a job at it anyways.
I’m new to this community. I’ve skimmed quite a few articles, and this sentence resonates with me for several reasons.
1) It’s very difficult in general to find websites like LessWrong these days. And among the few that exist, I’ve found that the intellectuals on them are so incredibly doubtful of their own intellect. This creates a sort of Ouroboros phenomenon where intellects just eat themselves into oblivion. Like, maybe I’m wrong but this site’s popularity seems to be going down?
2) At least from what I’ve noticed, when I compare articles in the last 2 months, to ones from about a decade ago, there is an alarming truth in your sentence. A decade ago, there were questions left in the articles for commenters to answer, there was a willingness to change one’s mind and to add/enhance ideas in a good faith manner. Now, it seems that many have confused this website for LinkedIn, posting their own personal paper trails (which is largely in a tone that isn’t unique anyways.)
It’s really unfortunate, since I was excited upon being greeted with much older articles. And then realising “Oh… that was from… holy! 10 years ago!?” To then be disappointed by our articles from today.
Hi there.
> (High confidence) I feel like the project of thinking more clearly has largely fallen by the wayside, and that we never did that great of a job at it anyways.
I’m new to this community. I’ve skimmed quite a few articles, and this sentence resonates with me for several reasons.
1) It’s very difficult in general to find websites like LessWrong these days. And among the few that exist, I’ve found that the intellectuals on them are so incredibly doubtful of their own intellect. This creates a sort of Ouroboros phenomenon where intellects just eat themselves into oblivion. Like, maybe I’m wrong but this site’s popularity seems to be going down?
2) At least from what I’ve noticed, when I compare articles in the last 2 months, to ones from about a decade ago, there is an alarming truth in your sentence. A decade ago, there were questions left in the articles for commenters to answer, there was a willingness to change one’s mind and to add/enhance ideas in a good faith manner. Now, it seems that many have confused this website for LinkedIn, posting their own personal paper trails (which is largely in a tone that isn’t unique anyways.)
It’s really unfortunate, since I was excited upon being greeted with much older articles. And then realising “Oh… that was from… holy! 10 years ago!?” To then be disappointed by our articles from today.