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 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.