Years ago (before I found LW) I was reading local websites, mostly political debates. Later I switched to Reddit. There I gradually replaced less interesting groups with more interesting ones. Then I replaced the entire thing with Hacker News. -- This all felt like progress from low quality to high quality. But when I take a step back, I see that I actually keep doing the same thing: reading the web. As opposed to, you know, actually doing something.
(More sadly, I realize that reading LW and SSC is also the more of the same.)
There is a symmetry to this sorting. (...) The smarter creating a certain kind of media makes me the dumber consuming it does.
I imagine that writing textbooks or creating online courses would be a minor exception to this rule. That is, creating a good online course is probably better than creating a video game, but studying an online course is also better than playing a video game.
But the important lesson is what you want to replace the category instead of replacing your place within the category. The goal is not to find a better website to read, but to replace reading websites with something better.
Reading Less Wrong might be the same but writing LW posts isn’t. On certain kinds of websites you don’t have to replace the website itself as long as you flip around the direction content flows. What’s SSC?
Good catch with the the online course exception. I missed it because I don’t personally use online courses. I think writing any sort of book is an exception to the rule too, since both reading and writing books make you smarter.
This feels correct.
Years ago (before I found LW) I was reading local websites, mostly political debates. Later I switched to Reddit. There I gradually replaced less interesting groups with more interesting ones. Then I replaced the entire thing with Hacker News. -- This all felt like progress from low quality to high quality. But when I take a step back, I see that I actually keep doing the same thing: reading the web. As opposed to, you know, actually doing something.
(More sadly, I realize that reading LW and SSC is also the more of the same.)
I imagine that writing textbooks or creating online courses would be a minor exception to this rule. That is, creating a good online course is probably better than creating a video game, but studying an online course is also better than playing a video game.
But the important lesson is what you want to replace the category instead of replacing your place within the category. The goal is not to find a better website to read, but to replace reading websites with something better.
Reading Less Wrong might be the same but writing LW posts isn’t. On certain kinds of websites you don’t have to replace the website itself as long as you flip around the direction content flows. What’s SSC?
Good catch with the the online course exception. I missed it because I don’t personally use online courses. I think writing any sort of book is an exception to the rule too, since both reading and writing books make you smarter.
SSC = Slate Star Codex, i.e. Scott Alexander’s blog.