I think I’m less open to weird ideas on LW than I used to be, and more likely to go “seems wrong, okay, next”. Probably this is partly a me thing, and I’m not sure it’s bad—as I gain knowledge, wisdom and experience, surely we’d expect me to become better at discerning whether a thing is worth paying attention to? (Which doesn’t mean I am better, but like. Just because I’m dismissing more ideas, doesn’t mean I’m incorrectly dismissing more ideas.)
But my guess is it’s also partly a LW thing. It seems to me that compared to 2013, there are more weird ideas on LW and they’re less worth paying attention to on average.
In this particular case… when you talk about “We don’t want you to say that” comments, it sounds to me like those comments don’t want you to say your ideas. It sounds like Habryka and other commenters interpreted it that way too.
But my read of the the comment you’re talking about here isn’t that it’s opposed to your ideas. Rather, it doesn’t want you to use a particular style of argument, and I agree with it, and I endorse “we don’t want bad arguments on LW”. I downvoted that post of yours because it seemed to be arguing poorly. It’s possible I missed something; I admittedly didn’t do a close read, because while I’ve enjoyed a lot of your posts, I don’t have you flagged in my brain as “if lsusr seems to be making a clear mistake, it’s worth looking closely to see if the error is my own”.
(I am sad that the “avoid paying your taxes” post got downvoted. It does seem to me like an example of the thing you’re talking about here, and I upvoted it myself.)
I also endorse pretty much everything in this comment.
(Except for the bit about the “avoid paying your taxes” post, because I don’t even remember that one.)
To emphasize this point: in many cases, the problem with some “weird ideas” isn’t, like, “oh no, this is too weird, I can’t even, don’t even make me think about this weird stuff :(”. It’s more like: “this is straightforwardly dumb and wrong”. (Indeed, much of the time it’s not even interestingly wrong, so it’s not even worth my time to argue with it. Just: dumb nonsense, already very well known to be dumb nonsense, nothing new to see or say, downvote and move on with life.)
I think I’m less open to weird ideas on LW than I used to be, and more likely to go “seems wrong, okay, next”. Probably this is partly a me thing, and I’m not sure it’s bad—as I gain knowledge, wisdom and experience, surely we’d expect me to become better at discerning whether a thing is worth paying attention to? (Which doesn’t mean I am better, but like. Just because I’m dismissing more ideas, doesn’t mean I’m incorrectly dismissing more ideas.)
But my guess is it’s also partly a LW thing. It seems to me that compared to 2013, there are more weird ideas on LW and they’re less worth paying attention to on average.
In this particular case… when you talk about “We don’t want you to say that” comments, it sounds to me like those comments don’t want you to say your ideas. It sounds like Habryka and other commenters interpreted it that way too.
But my read of the the comment you’re talking about here isn’t that it’s opposed to your ideas. Rather, it doesn’t want you to use a particular style of argument, and I agree with it, and I endorse “we don’t want bad arguments on LW”. I downvoted that post of yours because it seemed to be arguing poorly. It’s possible I missed something; I admittedly didn’t do a close read, because while I’ve enjoyed a lot of your posts, I don’t have you flagged in my brain as “if lsusr seems to be making a clear mistake, it’s worth looking closely to see if the error is my own”.
(I am sad that the “avoid paying your taxes” post got downvoted. It does seem to me like an example of the thing you’re talking about here, and I upvoted it myself.)
I also endorse pretty much everything in this comment.
(Except for the bit about the “avoid paying your taxes” post, because I don’t even remember that one.)
To emphasize this point: in many cases, the problem with some “weird ideas” isn’t, like, “oh no, this is too weird, I can’t even, don’t even make me think about this weird stuff :(”. It’s more like: “this is straightforwardly dumb and wrong”. (Indeed, much of the time it’s not even interestingly wrong, so it’s not even worth my time to argue with it. Just: dumb nonsense, already very well known to be dumb nonsense, nothing new to see or say, downvote and move on with life.)