No disagreement here that this place does this. I also think we should attempt to change many of these things. However, I don’t expect the lesswrong team to do anything sufficiently drastic to counter the hero-worship. Perhaps they could consider hiding usernames by default, hiding vote counts until things have been around for some period of time, or etc.
Hmm, my sense is Eliezer very rarely comments, and the people who do comment a lot don’t have a ton of hero worship going on (like maybe Wentworth?). So I don’t super believe that hiding usernames would do much about this.
Agree, and my guess is that the hero worship, to the extent it happens, is caused by something like
for Eliezer: people finding the rationality community and observing that they were less crazy than most other communities about various things, and Eliezer was a very prolific and persuasive writer
for Paul: Paucity of empirical alignment work before 2021 meant that Paul was one of the few people with formal CS experience and good alignment ideas, and had good name recognition due to posting on LW
I think one of the issues with Eliezer is that he sees himself as a hero, and it comes through both explicitly and in vibes in the writing, and Eliezer is also a persuasive writer.
Nothing wrong with it, in fact I recommend it. But seeing oneself as a hero and persuading others of it will indeed be one of the main issues leading to hero worship.
how would you operationalize a bet on this? I’d take “yes” on “will hiding usernames by default decrease hero worship on lesswrong” on manifold, if you want to do an AB test or something.
Hacker News shows you the vote counts on your comments privately. I think that’s a significant improvement. It nudges people towards thinking for themselves rather than trying to figure out where the herd is going. At least, I think it does, because HN seems to have remarkable viewpoint diversity compared with other forums.
No disagreement here that this place does this. I also think we should attempt to change many of these things. However, I don’t expect the lesswrong team to do anything sufficiently drastic to counter the hero-worship. Perhaps they could consider hiding usernames by default, hiding vote counts until things have been around for some period of time, or etc.
Hmm, my sense is Eliezer very rarely comments, and the people who do comment a lot don’t have a ton of hero worship going on (like maybe Wentworth?). So I don’t super believe that hiding usernames would do much about this.
Agree, and my guess is that the hero worship, to the extent it happens, is caused by something like
for Eliezer: people finding the rationality community and observing that they were less crazy than most other communities about various things, and Eliezer was a very prolific and persuasive writer
for Paul: Paucity of empirical alignment work before 2021 meant that Paul was one of the few people with formal CS experience and good alignment ideas, and had good name recognition due to posting on LW
Both of these seem to be solving themselves.
I think one of the issues with Eliezer is that he sees himself as a hero, and it comes through both explicitly and in vibes in the writing, and Eliezer is also a persuasive writer.
What is wrong with seeing oneself as a hero?
Nothing wrong with it, in fact I recommend it. But seeing oneself as a hero and persuading others of it will indeed be one of the main issues leading to hero worship.
how would you operationalize a bet on this? I’d take “yes” on “will hiding usernames by default decrease hero worship on lesswrong” on manifold, if you want to do an AB test or something.
Hacker News shows you the vote counts on your comments privately. I think that’s a significant improvement. It nudges people towards thinking for themselves rather than trying to figure out where the herd is going. At least, I think it does, because HN seems to have remarkable viewpoint diversity compared with other forums.