For me, it’s the relatively high epistemic standards combined with relative variety of topics. I can imagine a narrowly specialized website with no bullshit, but I haven’t yet seen a website that is not narrowly specialized and does not contain lots of bullshit. Even most smart people usually become quite stupid outside the lab. Less Wrong is a place outside the lab that doesn’t feel painfully stupid. (For example, the average intelligence at Hacker News seems quite high, but I still regularly find upvoted comments that make me cry.)
Yeah, Less Wrong seems to be a combination of project and aesthetic. Insofar as it’s a project, we’re looking for techniques of general intelligence, partly by stress-testing them on a variety of topics. As an aesthetic, it’s a unique combination of tone, length, and variety + familiarity of topics that scratches a particular literary itch.
For me, it’s the relatively high epistemic standards combined with relative variety of topics. I can imagine a narrowly specialized website with no bullshit, but I haven’t yet seen a website that is not narrowly specialized and does not contain lots of bullshit. Even most smart people usually become quite stupid outside the lab. Less Wrong is a place outside the lab that doesn’t feel painfully stupid. (For example, the average intelligence at Hacker News seems quite high, but I still regularly find upvoted comments that make me cry.)
Yeah, Less Wrong seems to be a combination of project and aesthetic. Insofar as it’s a project, we’re looking for techniques of general intelligence, partly by stress-testing them on a variety of topics. As an aesthetic, it’s a unique combination of tone, length, and variety + familiarity of topics that scratches a particular literary itch.