As the author of one of the rehash posts, I agree that these sorts of topics are generally pretty boring and uninteresting to read. There’s nothing surprising or new in them, and they seem pretty obvious when you read them.
But the point (of mine at least) wasn’t really to expose any new material, so much as to try to push people into doing something useful. As far as I can tell, a large portion of the readers of LW don’t implement various easy life-improvement methods, and it was really more intended as a push to encourage people to use them.
On the one hand, a lot of interesting stuff on LW is “applied rationality” and its really fun to read, but I’m fairly skeptical as to how useful it is for most people. There’s nothing wrong with it being interesting and fun, but there are other things to talk about.
As the author of one of the rehash posts, I agree that these sorts of topics are generally pretty boring and uninteresting to read. There’s nothing surprising or new in them, and they seem pretty obvious when you read them.
But the point (of mine at least) wasn’t really to expose any new material, so much as to try to push people into doing something useful. As far as I can tell, a large portion of the readers of LW don’t implement various easy life-improvement methods, and it was really more intended as a push to encourage people to use them.
On the one hand, a lot of interesting stuff on LW is “applied rationality” and its really fun to read, but I’m fairly skeptical as to how useful it is for most people. There’s nothing wrong with it being interesting and fun, but there are other things to talk about.