Can LW generate the kind of insights needed to make progress on problems like ASP? Or should we keep working as a small clique?
Yes, especially if matt adds a ‘decision theory’ subreddit. That way those from the clique with a narrow interest in decision theory can just follow that page instead. I know I would be more likely to engage with the topics on a reddit style medium than via email. Email conversations are just a lot harder to follow. Especially given that, let’s be honest, the ‘small clique’ is barely active and can go for weeks or a month between email.
Having lesswrong exposed to people who are actively thinking through and solving a difficult problem would be an overwhelmingly good influence on the lesswrong community and will expose potential new thinkers, hopefully inspiring some of them to get involved in the problem solving themselves. There will, of course, be a lowering of the average standard of the discussion but I would expect a net increase in high quality contributions as well. Heavy upvoting of the clear thinking and commensurate downvoting would make new insights accessible.
(Mind you there is an obvious advantage to having decision theory conversations that are not on a sight run by SIAI too.)
I think for the same reason we had meetup posts on the front page, we should just post stuff to the main LW (this will maximize the use case of recruiting new people), and we should move on to creating a sub-reddit only when the volume becomes distracting. The decision theory list can continue to serve the current purpose of a place to discuss particularly arcane ideas (that are not results), which new recruits won’t typically understand anyway (and so why waste anyone’s time). Publicly opening list’s archives (but not subscription, we don’t have voting over there to defend ourselves) can cover the rest.
But we might want to adopt a standard tag on LW so that people can subscribe to this part only, which I can commit to consistently setting on all posts that quality, say “decision_theory” (just fixed for this post).
Can LW generate the kind of insights needed to make progress on problems like ASP?
Yes, especially if matt adds a ‘decision theory’ subreddit.
From context I suppose you’re talking about a subreddit of LessWrong, not a subreddit of Reddit. Is there a list of existing LessWrong subreddits somewhere, or is this proposal to create the first one?
Yes, especially if matt adds a ‘decision theory’ subreddit. That way those from the clique with a narrow interest in decision theory can just follow that page instead. I know I would be more likely to engage with the topics on a reddit style medium than via email. Email conversations are just a lot harder to follow. Especially given that, let’s be honest, the ‘small clique’ is barely active and can go for weeks or a month between email.
Having lesswrong exposed to people who are actively thinking through and solving a difficult problem would be an overwhelmingly good influence on the lesswrong community and will expose potential new thinkers, hopefully inspiring some of them to get involved in the problem solving themselves. There will, of course, be a lowering of the average standard of the discussion but I would expect a net increase in high quality contributions as well. Heavy upvoting of the clear thinking and commensurate downvoting would make new insights accessible.
(Mind you there is an obvious advantage to having decision theory conversations that are not on a sight run by SIAI too.)
I think for the same reason we had meetup posts on the front page, we should just post stuff to the main LW (this will maximize the use case of recruiting new people), and we should move on to creating a sub-reddit only when the volume becomes distracting. The decision theory list can continue to serve the current purpose of a place to discuss particularly arcane ideas (that are not results), which new recruits won’t typically understand anyway (and so why waste anyone’s time). Publicly opening list’s archives (but not subscription, we don’t have voting over there to defend ourselves) can cover the rest.
But we might want to adopt a standard tag on LW so that people can subscribe to this part only, which I can commit to consistently setting on all posts that quality, say “decision_theory” (just fixed for this post).
From context I suppose you’re talking about a subreddit of LessWrong, not a subreddit of Reddit. Is there a list of existing LessWrong subreddits somewhere, or is this proposal to create the first one?