No, keep it down voted! The time stamp from where I’m sitting is April 2nd, and this is on the front page. Sowing random confusion as an “April 1st prank” is just senseless if you’re not at least going to make sure the post is marked as such, and I honestly don’t think such is appropriate here to begin with.
I actually think it’s pretty useful for Less Wrong to have occasionally wrong articles that force us to maintain constant vigilance. I do think they should be labeled as such somewhere, but not obtrusively, to give people time to be “tested.”
I was embarrassed that I failed the test (I tend to skim articles and say “yeah, sounds plausible”, and I appreciated the “reality check.”
http://xkcd.com/169/ - I know people who actually feel that it is amazingly clever to say things like this, and a lot of them self-identify as Rationalists. I don’t feel that there is much benefit from determining whether I am dealing with someone who truly thinks like this, or merely a troll.
… so I really don’t think this article qualifies as such a useful test. Why would I bother reading the citations if the article is already clearly bunk? It doesn’t matter if he can back up his assertions, because the article is useless/wrong with or without that additional proof. If he’d made it a bit more obvious, perhaps, but this is pretty much indistinguishable from what I’d actually expect to see posted here occasionally (albeit normally under “Discussion” or at least not Promoted)
I appreciated it in part because there have been a few Less Wrong posts that HAD citations (or at least a bunch of links going to articles that looked fairly legit) which I took at face value, and I lazily threw the links at people without having read them thoroughly, only to find that they didn’t say what I thought they said, or the evidence wasn’t nearly as compelling.
It was a wake up call that you can’t to outsource your rationality to someone else, even a community of rationalists. So essentially I try to always treat Lesswrong articles as if they are an April Fool’s prank, either doublechecking them or not flagging them as “obvious truth” until I’ve read more background material.
I think having an occasional article that explicitly reminds of this is useful.
I never even had a chance; it was March when I read it. :/ Guess I’ll remove my downvote.
No, keep it down voted! The time stamp from where I’m sitting is April 2nd, and this is on the front page. Sowing random confusion as an “April 1st prank” is just senseless if you’re not at least going to make sure the post is marked as such, and I honestly don’t think such is appropriate here to begin with.
I actually think it’s pretty useful for Less Wrong to have occasionally wrong articles that force us to maintain constant vigilance. I do think they should be labeled as such somewhere, but not obtrusively, to give people time to be “tested.”
I was embarrassed that I failed the test (I tend to skim articles and say “yeah, sounds plausible”, and I appreciated the “reality check.”
While I agree with you in principle...
http://xkcd.com/169/ - I know people who actually feel that it is amazingly clever to say things like this, and a lot of them self-identify as Rationalists. I don’t feel that there is much benefit from determining whether I am dealing with someone who truly thinks like this, or merely a troll.
… so I really don’t think this article qualifies as such a useful test. Why would I bother reading the citations if the article is already clearly bunk? It doesn’t matter if he can back up his assertions, because the article is useless/wrong with or without that additional proof. If he’d made it a bit more obvious, perhaps, but this is pretty much indistinguishable from what I’d actually expect to see posted here occasionally (albeit normally under “Discussion” or at least not Promoted)
I appreciated it in part because there have been a few Less Wrong posts that HAD citations (or at least a bunch of links going to articles that looked fairly legit) which I took at face value, and I lazily threw the links at people without having read them thoroughly, only to find that they didn’t say what I thought they said, or the evidence wasn’t nearly as compelling.
It was a wake up call that you can’t to outsource your rationality to someone else, even a community of rationalists. So essentially I try to always treat Lesswrong articles as if they are an April Fool’s prank, either doublechecking them or not flagging them as “obvious truth” until I’ve read more background material.
I think having an occasional article that explicitly reminds of this is useful.
Hmmm, you make a fair point! I might not have valued the post, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t valuable to others.