I’m feeling fairly negative on lesswrong this week. Time spent here feels unproductive, and I’m vaguely uncomfortable with the attitudes I’m developing. On the other hand there are interesting people to chat with.
Undecided what to do about this. Haven’t managed to come up with anything to firm up my vague emotions into something specific.
I was feeling fairly negative on Less Wrong recently. I ended up writing down a lot of things that bothered me in a a half formed angry Google Doc rant, saving it...
and then going back to reading Less Wrong a few days later.
It felt refreshing though, because Less Wrong has flaws and you are allowed to notice them and say to yourself “This! Why are some people doing this! It’s so dumb and silly!”
That being said, I’m not sure that all of the arguments that my straw opponents were presenting in the half formed doc are actually as weak as I was making them out to be. But it did make me feel more positive overall simply summing up everything that had been bugging me at the time.
I’m only posting this to clarify. Old habits do indeed die hard, but I so far haven’t changed my mind despite receiving some interesting email on the topic. Hopefully this will become more apparent after a month or two of inactivity.
It would very much help if you could name three examples of each of your complaints, this would help you see if this really is the source of your unease. It would also help others figure out if you are right.
an uncomfortable air of superiority
Overestimating our rationality and generally feeling clearer thinkers than anyone ever? Or perhaps unwilling to update on outside ideas like Konkvistador recently complained?
a bit too much association with right wing politics.
There is a lot of right wing politics on the IRC channel, but overall I don’t think I’ve seen much on the main site. On net the sites demographics are if anything remarkably left-wing.
Some of the PUA stuff is a bit weird (not discussed directly on the site so much but in related contexts)
The PUA stuff may come off as weird due to inferential distances or people accumulating strange ideas because they can’t sanity check them. Both are the result of the community norm that sort now seems to strongly avoid gender issues because we’ve proven time and again to be incapable of discussing them as we do most other things. This is a pattern that seems to go back to the old OB days.
I use LW casually and my attitude towards it is pretty neutral/positive but I recently got downvoted something like 10 times in past comments, it seems. A karma loss of 5%, and it’s a lot, comparing the amount of karma I have to how long I’ve been here. I didn’t even get into a big argument or anything, the back-and-forth was pretty short. So my attitude toward LW is very meh right now. Sorry, sort of wanted to just say this somewhere. ugh :/
I’m feeling fairly negative on lesswrong this week. Time spent here feels unproductive, and I’m vaguely uncomfortable with the attitudes I’m developing. On the other hand there are interesting people to chat with.
Undecided what to do about this. Haven’t managed to come up with anything to firm up my vague emotions into something specific.
Perhaps I’ll take a break and see how it feels.
I was feeling fairly negative on Less Wrong recently. I ended up writing down a lot of things that bothered me in a a half formed angry Google Doc rant, saving it...
and then going back to reading Less Wrong a few days later.
It felt refreshing though, because Less Wrong has flaws and you are allowed to notice them and say to yourself “This! Why are some people doing this! It’s so dumb and silly!”
That being said, I’m not sure that all of the arguments that my straw opponents were presenting in the half formed doc are actually as weak as I was making them out to be. But it did make me feel more positive overall simply summing up everything that had been bugging me at the time.
Hasn’t worked for Konkvistador.
I’m only posting this to clarify. Old habits do indeed die hard, but I so far haven’t changed my mind despite receiving some interesting email on the topic. Hopefully this will become more apparent after a month or two of inactivity.
What are the attitudes you are feeling uncomfortable with?
Hmm this is a bit fuzzy, as I said—part of my problem is that I just have a vague feeling and am having difficulty making it less vague. But:
an uncomfortable air of superiority
a bit too much association with right wing politics.
Some of the PUA stuff is a bit weird (not discussed directly on the site so much but in related contexts)
It would very much help if you could name three examples of each of your complaints, this would help you see if this really is the source of your unease. It would also help others figure out if you are right.
Overestimating our rationality and generally feeling clearer thinkers than anyone ever? Or perhaps unwilling to update on outside ideas like Konkvistador recently complained?
There is a lot of right wing politics on the IRC channel, but overall I don’t think I’ve seen much on the main site. On net the sites demographics are if anything remarkably left-wing.
The PUA stuff may come off as weird due to inferential distances or people accumulating strange ideas because they can’t sanity check them. Both are the result of the community norm that sort now seems to strongly avoid gender issues because we’ve proven time and again to be incapable of discussing them as we do most other things. This is a pattern that seems to go back to the old OB days.
I use LW casually and my attitude towards it is pretty neutral/positive but I recently got downvoted something like 10 times in past comments, it seems. A karma loss of 5%, and it’s a lot, comparing the amount of karma I have to how long I’ve been here. I didn’t even get into a big argument or anything, the back-and-forth was pretty short. So my attitude toward LW is very meh right now. Sorry, sort of wanted to just say this somewhere. ugh :/
The fact that LW is a forum about rationality/science don’t mean it’s good for you all the time. Strategically speaking, redefine your goals.
Or, maybe the quality of posts are not the same that was before.