#3 seems straightforwardly true. But… I’m not sure that matters? Sure, you hear about the successes and not the failures, but the point is that success is possible. That selection and survivor biases play a role just means that we can’t tell people to read the sequences and expect that to be a panacea.
Well, if this is true, it also means that you’re unlikely to reliably succeed at deliberately making success happen (that is, you’re almost certain to succeed in some small fraction of cases, and just as certain to fail in the greater part). Of course, such things can be true to a greater or lesser degree, and I don’t want to push this point too hard.
Re: the Guild as community:
What do you think of the notion (which has been brought up by me, and others, at various times in the past) that a significant cause of many of the problems that plague the Bay Area rationalist communities is precisely the conflation of the community and the task/project group? Do you think this view is basically wrong, or that it’s basically correct but it won’t be a problem for you (for whatever reason), or something else?
What do you think of the notion that a significant cause of many of the problems that plague the Bay Area rationalist communities is precisely the conflation of the community and the task/project group?
It seems plausible, but mostly I think I’m unqualified to have an opinion since I’ve neither researched nor interacted with that community. However… I’m very skeptical that craft/community mixing is inherently bad. Could you elaborate more on why you think this is the case for the Bay Area, or link me to something that explains the reasoning a bit more?
Well, if this is true, it also means that you’re unlikely to reliably succeed at deliberately making success happen (that is, you’re almost certain to succeed in some small fraction of cases, and just as certain to fail in the greater part). Of course, such things can be true to a greater or lesser degree, and I don’t want to push this point too hard.
Re: the Guild as community:
What do you think of the notion (which has been brought up by me, and others, at various times in the past) that a significant cause of many of the problems that plague the Bay Area rationalist communities is precisely the conflation of the community and the task/project group? Do you think this view is basically wrong, or that it’s basically correct but it won’t be a problem for you (for whatever reason), or something else?
It seems plausible, but mostly I think I’m unqualified to have an opinion since I’ve neither researched nor interacted with that community. However… I’m very skeptical that craft/community mixing is inherently bad. Could you elaborate more on why you think this is the case for the Bay Area, or link me to something that explains the reasoning a bit more?
Hmm, I’d have to dig up links, which I don’t have handy; I was hoping you’d already be familiar with this debate. Ah well.
I guess I’ll just say that past experience and observation leads me to be very skeptical of your “mixed approach”, so to speak.