Regardless of whether we should have more or fewer posts, the problem you noticed is more precisely traced back to the lack of infrastructure aimed at collating the best output and resources produced or aggregated here. I got a lot of benefit from the “best textbooks” thread, the post(s) introducing Beeminder back in the day, the post by cousin_it on mutual screen-monitoring, and perhaps from a few other interventions (standing desks, nicotine) I picked up in the local memespace. I doubt I could find many of these as a newcomer, except by lurking around for long enough. Not proposing a solution so far, but this seems to be a common problem with big blogs that have lots of excellent content but even more chaff.
ETA: N-acetylcysteine is actually FDA-approved but only as an expectorant and as an antidote for APAP overdose.
This is similar to the approach that Eliezer took with the sequences, but much smaller and more focused on achieving specific things, rather than understanding concepts. I think that LW could do something similar with user curated guides votable guides that pull together the best posts into coherent step by step instructions.
Yep, I’ve been using this approach to construct algorithms for myself to follow in order to sleep better, overcome aversions, improve my mood, form habits, etc. Basically aggregating all the life hacks I read online and indexing them by the situations in my life in which I need them. It’s been working pretty well, although it’s a huge project I’m far from completing. My eventual goal is to algorithmitize my entire life and thus become automatically strategic.
How to make people more interested in maintaining the wiki? (Preferably without having edit wars like Wikipedia.) Because wiki could be the infrastructure for the published information.
Hmm. A certain prominent wiki displays featured articles on the front page. That would reward efforts to maintain and extend the wiki, while also increasing the visibility of high-quality materials to newcomers.
this seems to be a common problem with big blogs that have lots of excellent content but even more chaff.
I’ll go so far as to say that this is a massive unsolved problem: (Semi-)automatically seperating the noise from the signal in the space of documents. Voting systems partially solve this problem but don’t scale, see for example Reddit’s subreddits as they grow in size.
Subreddits are still pretty good in that when I am researching a new area, I can look for the top rated posts of all time in a particular subreddit and get some good information.
Thanks for that. I really should take a closer look at all the content there (there seems to be some beneficial stuff I wasn’t aware of), but the current format strikes me as pretty ill-suited to anyone but the most motivated aspiring rationalists and lifehackers. More to the point, I don’t think relative newcomers are actually going to read the FAQ (this is just a hunch based on what I would do / what I did).
I agree with your point that we could produce more social value by encouraging more posts, especially on instrumental rationality topics. But I think we can do a lot more on the cheap by figuring out how to make existing high-quality content and resources more accessible to readers who weren’t around when they were originally discussed.
You framed your post around life hacks and Alex’s response is also about them. But the link you give here is almost entirely about other topics.
Edit: I changed the wiki, and now the lights that you mentioned and the textbooks that Alex mentioned show up, but the proportion of advice didn’t change. Anyone actually looking for advice would give up before finding those examples.
Regardless of whether we should have more or fewer posts, the problem you noticed is more precisely traced back to the lack of infrastructure aimed at collating the best output and resources produced or aggregated here. I got a lot of benefit from the “best textbooks” thread, the post(s) introducing Beeminder back in the day, the post by cousin_it on mutual screen-monitoring, and perhaps from a few other interventions (standing desks, nicotine) I picked up in the local memespace. I doubt I could find many of these as a newcomer, except by lurking around for long enough. Not proposing a solution so far, but this seems to be a common problem with big blogs that have lots of excellent content but even more chaff.
ETA: N-acetylcysteine is actually FDA-approved but only as an expectorant and as an antidote for APAP overdose.
I’ve been working to solve this problem recently with my blog. What I’ve done is organize posts and resources into step by step guides that help you achieve specific goals, like this: http://selfmaderenegade.net/resource-page/how-to-get-a-job-without-experience/
This is similar to the approach that Eliezer took with the sequences, but much smaller and more focused on achieving specific things, rather than understanding concepts. I think that LW could do something similar with user curated guides votable guides that pull together the best posts into coherent step by step instructions.
Yep, I’ve been using this approach to construct algorithms for myself to follow in order to sleep better, overcome aversions, improve my mood, form habits, etc. Basically aggregating all the life hacks I read online and indexing them by the situations in my life in which I need them. It’s been working pretty well, although it’s a huge project I’m far from completing. My eventual goal is to algorithmitize my entire life and thus become automatically strategic.
How to make people more interested in maintaining the wiki? (Preferably without having edit wars like Wikipedia.) Because wiki could be the infrastructure for the published information.
Hmm. A certain prominent wiki displays featured articles on the front page. That would reward efforts to maintain and extend the wiki, while also increasing the visibility of high-quality materials to newcomers.
I’ll go so far as to say that this is a massive unsolved problem: (Semi-)automatically seperating the noise from the signal in the space of documents. Voting systems partially solve this problem but don’t scale, see for example Reddit’s subreddits as they grow in size.
Subreddits are still pretty good in that when I am researching a new area, I can look for the top rated posts of all time in a particular subreddit and get some good information.
What’s your perception of all the current ways top content is being aggregated?
Thanks for that. I really should take a closer look at all the content there (there seems to be some beneficial stuff I wasn’t aware of), but the current format strikes me as pretty ill-suited to anyone but the most motivated aspiring rationalists and lifehackers. More to the point, I don’t think relative newcomers are actually going to read the FAQ (this is just a hunch based on what I would do / what I did).
I agree with your point that we could produce more social value by encouraging more posts, especially on instrumental rationality topics. But I think we can do a lot more on the cheap by figuring out how to make existing high-quality content and resources more accessible to readers who weren’t around when they were originally discussed.
You framed your post around life hacks and Alex’s response is also about them. But the link you give here is almost entirely about other topics.
Edit: I changed the wiki, and now the lights that you mentioned and the textbooks that Alex mentioned show up, but the proportion of advice didn’t change. Anyone actually looking for advice would give up before finding those examples.