I feel like LW has varied a surprising amount on how much it values something like the “useful”/”relevant”/”important”/”weightiness”/”seriousness” principal component. LW is not a humor site, and there isn’t a ton of frivolous posting, but we do have a lot of culture and people do have fun a bunch. My current take is that LW does care about this dimension more than most other internet forums, but a lot less than basically all professional forums or scientific journals or anything in that reference class.
Part of the problem (not the entirety of it by any means, but a substantial part) is that the claim that these things (‘“useful”/”relevant”/”important”/”weightiness”/”seriousness”’) are somehow one thing is… extremely non-obvious. To me they seem like several different things. I don’t even really know what you mean by any of them (I can make some very general guesses, but who knows if my guesses are even close to what you’ve got in mind?), and I definitely don’t have the first clue how to interpret them as some kind of single thing.
(Really there are so many problems with this whole “kind/true/necessary, pick 2” thing that it seems like if I start listing them, we’ll be here all day. Maybe a big part of the problem is that I’ve never seen it persuasively—or even seriously—defended, and yet it’s routinely cited as if it’s just an uncontroversially good framework. It seems like one of those things that has so much intuitive appeal that most people simply refuse to give it any real thought, no matter how many and how serious are the problems that it is demonstrated to have, because they so strongly don’t want to abandon it. I do not include you among that number, to be clear.)
To me they seem like several different things. I don’t even really know what you mean by any of them (I can make some very general guesses, but who knows if my guesses are even close to what you’ve got in mind?), and I definitely don’t have the first clue how to interpret them as some kind of single thing.
My guess is I could communicate the concept extensionally by just pointing to lots of examples, but IDK, I don’t super feel like putting in the effort right now. I broadly agree with you that this feels like a framework that is often given too much weight, but I also get decent mileage out of the version I described in my comment.
To be clear, it wasn’t my intention to suggest that I expected you to clarify, right here in this comment thread, this concept (or concepts) that you’re using. I don’t expect that would be a good use of your time (and it seems like you agree).
My point, rather, was that it’s really not clear (to me, and I expect—based on many concrete instances of experience!—to many others, also) what these words are being used to mean, whether this is a single concept or multiple concepts, what exactly those concepts are, etc. Quite apart from the concrete question “what does that mean”, the fact that I don’t have even any good guesses about the answer (much less anything resembling certainty) makes the concept in question a poor basis for any evaluation with practical consequences!
I broadly agree with you that this feels like a framework that is often given too much weight, but I also get decent mileage out of the version I described in my comment.
I don’t doubt that, but I do want to point out that a set of criteria applied to oneself, and the same set of criteria applied to others, will have very different consequences.
Part of the problem (not the entirety of it by any means, but a substantial part) is that the claim that these things (‘“useful”/”relevant”/”important”/”weightiness”/”seriousness”’) are somehow one thing is… extremely non-obvious. To me they seem like several different things. I don’t even really know what you mean by any of them (I can make some very general guesses, but who knows if my guesses are even close to what you’ve got in mind?), and I definitely don’t have the first clue how to interpret them as some kind of single thing.
(Really there are so many problems with this whole “kind/true/necessary, pick 2” thing that it seems like if I start listing them, we’ll be here all day. Maybe a big part of the problem is that I’ve never seen it persuasively—or even seriously—defended, and yet it’s routinely cited as if it’s just an uncontroversially good framework. It seems like one of those things that has so much intuitive appeal that most people simply refuse to give it any real thought, no matter how many and how serious are the problems that it is demonstrated to have, because they so strongly don’t want to abandon it. I do not include you among that number, to be clear.)
My guess is I could communicate the concept extensionally by just pointing to lots of examples, but IDK, I don’t super feel like putting in the effort right now. I broadly agree with you that this feels like a framework that is often given too much weight, but I also get decent mileage out of the version I described in my comment.
To be clear, it wasn’t my intention to suggest that I expected you to clarify, right here in this comment thread, this concept (or concepts) that you’re using. I don’t expect that would be a good use of your time (and it seems like you agree).
My point, rather, was that it’s really not clear (to me, and I expect—based on many concrete instances of experience!—to many others, also) what these words are being used to mean, whether this is a single concept or multiple concepts, what exactly those concepts are, etc. Quite apart from the concrete question “what does that mean”, the fact that I don’t have even any good guesses about the answer (much less anything resembling certainty) makes the concept in question a poor basis for any evaluation with practical consequences!
I don’t doubt that, but I do want to point out that a set of criteria applied to oneself, and the same set of criteria applied to others, will have very different consequences.