Problem 1: The subject area is defined too narrowly. Instead of limiting ourselves to “refining the art of human rationality”, I would like the forum to allow any content which is interesting to an audience of atheist humanists who favor solving problems through a rational / analytic approach and who cherish a rationalist style of discourse. This also applies to how the forum markets itself outside.
Problem 2: Much of the time, the forum feels too much like a battle arena and too little like a community. In particular, I felt great disillusionment with LessWrong after my proposal to restrict downvotes to traditional use-cases of moderation received vehement opposition. Possible improvements:
Add a lot of community features to the site. For example, integrate the google groups for LW business networking and LW parenting into the site (there is currently no way for newcomers to find them). Create a platform for LW couch surfing. LW crowdfunding. Subforums for people seeking advice anonymously. Et cetera.
Revamp the Karma system. For example, go for something more like StackExchange (e.g. you can’t downvote a comment, you can only “flag as inappropriate”).
Publish much more of the stuff going on in meetups to the site. For example, videos. Maybe we also can allow people to participate in meetups remotely through e.g. Google hangout.
Much of the time, the forum feels too much like a battle arena and too little like a community. In particular, I felt great disillusionment with LessWrong after my proposal to restrict downvotes to traditional use-cases of moderation received vehement opposition.
I believe that friendly behavior and not downvoting are two different things, but these ideas seem mixed together in some proposals.
I would prefer if LW became more friendly, and less like a “battle arena”. I mean, when I meet with rationalists at meetups, I am so happy, and I love them all… so why don’t my words here reflect it? This is a thing that needs to be fixed, and that I need to be reminded of more often.
But upvoting and downvoting is different from that. Votes != words. Clicking upvote a dozen times is not an equivalent of saying “I love you”. We need more warm speech, not indiscriminate upvoting. At least this is how I feel about it. My idea of a better LW is a place with warmer discussion, not a place where hyperlinks without a summary get upvoted. That would be solving a wrong problem.
you can’t downvote a comment, you can only “flag as inappropriate”
Wouldn’t that be like comments on Facebook? I am afraid it would incentivize people to post controversial comments. These days a comment with 3 upvotes and 0 downvotes has a higher score than a comment with 7 upvotes and 10 downvotes; without downvoting it would be the other way round.
Publish much more of the stuff going on in meetups to the site.
Yes. And even more generally—if your (rationality-related, but not necessarily) activities are in the real world, then write about them here. Tell us what happened at your meetup. Tell us about things you debated in your google group. Etc.
Maybe we also can allow people to participate in meetups remotely through e.g. Google hangout.
Some people tried that, the problem is you can’t have more than cca 10 people in a hangout, and even then it goes very slowly. :(
I am afraid it would incentivize people to post controversial comments.
I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing. It certainly would help avoid groupthink or forced conformity. And if someone gets upvoted for posting controversial argument A, then someone can respond and get even more votes for explaining the logic behind not-A.
So, what is your opinion on neoreaction, pick up artists, human biodiversity, capitalism, and feminism?
Just joking, please don’t answer! The idea is that in a debate system without downvotes this is the thread where strong opinions would get many upvotes… and many people frustrated that they can can’t downvote anymore, so instead they would write a reply in the opposite direction, which would also get many upvotes.
We wouldn’t have groupthink and conformity. Instead, we would have factions and mindkilling. It could be fun at the beginning, but after a few months we would probably notice that we are debating the same things over and over.
There certainly needs to be some way to moderate out things that are unhelpful to the discussion. The question is who decides and how do they enforce that decision.
Other rationalist communities are able to discuss those issues without exploding. I assume that Alexander/Yvain is running Slate Star Codex as a benevolent dictatorship, which is why he can discuss hot button topics without everything exploding. Also, he doesn’t have an organizational reputation to protect—LessWrong reflects directly on MIRI.
I agree in principle that the suggestion to simply disallow upvotes would probably be counterproductive. But how are we supposed to learn to be more rational if we can’t practice by dealing with difficult issues? What’s the point of having discussions if we’re not allowed to discuss anything that we disagree on?
I guess I think we need to revisit the question of what the purpose of LessWrong is. What goal are we trying to accomplish? Maybe it’s to refine our rationality skills and then go try them out somewhere else, so that the mess of debate happens on someone else’s turf?
As I write this comment I’m starting to suspect that the purpose of the ban on politics is in place to protect the reputation of MIRI. As a donor, I’m not entirely unsympathetic to that view.
If this comment comes off as rambling, it’s because I’m trying not to jump to a conclusion. I haven’t yet decided what my recommendation to improve the quantity and quality of discussion would be.
Problem 1: The subject area is defined too narrowly. Instead of limiting ourselves to “refining the art of human rationality”, I would like the forum to allow any content which is interesting to an audience of atheist humanists who favor solving problems through a rational / analytic approach and who cherish a rationalist style of discourse. This also applies to how the forum markets itself outside.
Problem 2: Much of the time, the forum feels too much like a battle arena and too little like a community. In particular, I felt great disillusionment with LessWrong after my proposal to restrict downvotes to traditional use-cases of moderation received vehement opposition. Possible improvements:
Add a lot of community features to the site. For example, integrate the google groups for LW business networking and LW parenting into the site (there is currently no way for newcomers to find them). Create a platform for LW couch surfing. LW crowdfunding. Subforums for people seeking advice anonymously. Et cetera.
Revamp the Karma system. For example, go for something more like StackExchange (e.g. you can’t downvote a comment, you can only “flag as inappropriate”).
Publish much more of the stuff going on in meetups to the site. For example, videos. Maybe we also can allow people to participate in meetups remotely through e.g. Google hangout.
I believe that friendly behavior and not downvoting are two different things, but these ideas seem mixed together in some proposals.
I would prefer if LW became more friendly, and less like a “battle arena”. I mean, when I meet with rationalists at meetups, I am so happy, and I love them all… so why don’t my words here reflect it? This is a thing that needs to be fixed, and that I need to be reminded of more often.
But upvoting and downvoting is different from that. Votes != words. Clicking upvote a dozen times is not an equivalent of saying “I love you”. We need more warm speech, not indiscriminate upvoting. At least this is how I feel about it. My idea of a better LW is a place with warmer discussion, not a place where hyperlinks without a summary get upvoted. That would be solving a wrong problem.
Wouldn’t that be like comments on Facebook? I am afraid it would incentivize people to post controversial comments. These days a comment with 3 upvotes and 0 downvotes has a higher score than a comment with 7 upvotes and 10 downvotes; without downvoting it would be the other way round.
Yes. And even more generally—if your (rationality-related, but not necessarily) activities are in the real world, then write about them here. Tell us what happened at your meetup. Tell us about things you debated in your google group. Etc.
Some people tried that, the problem is you can’t have more than cca 10 people in a hangout, and even then it goes very slowly. :(
I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing. It certainly would help avoid groupthink or forced conformity. And if someone gets upvoted for posting controversial argument A, then someone can respond and get even more votes for explaining the logic behind not-A.
So, what is your opinion on neoreaction, pick up artists, human biodiversity, capitalism, and feminism?
Just joking, please don’t answer! The idea is that in a debate system without downvotes this is the thread where strong opinions would get many upvotes… and many people frustrated that they can can’t downvote anymore, so instead they would write a reply in the opposite direction, which would also get many upvotes.
We wouldn’t have groupthink and conformity. Instead, we would have factions and mindkilling. It could be fun at the beginning, but after a few months we would probably notice that we are debating the same things over and over.
There certainly needs to be some way to moderate out things that are unhelpful to the discussion. The question is who decides and how do they enforce that decision.
Other rationalist communities are able to discuss those issues without exploding. I assume that Alexander/Yvain is running Slate Star Codex as a benevolent dictatorship, which is why he can discuss hot button topics without everything exploding. Also, he doesn’t have an organizational reputation to protect—LessWrong reflects directly on MIRI.
I agree in principle that the suggestion to simply disallow upvotes would probably be counterproductive. But how are we supposed to learn to be more rational if we can’t practice by dealing with difficult issues? What’s the point of having discussions if we’re not allowed to discuss anything that we disagree on?
I guess I think we need to revisit the question of what the purpose of LessWrong is. What goal are we trying to accomplish? Maybe it’s to refine our rationality skills and then go try them out somewhere else, so that the mess of debate happens on someone else’s turf?
As I write this comment I’m starting to suspect that the purpose of the ban on politics is in place to protect the reputation of MIRI. As a donor, I’m not entirely unsympathetic to that view.
If this comment comes off as rambling, it’s because I’m trying not to jump to a conclusion. I haven’t yet decided what my recommendation to improve the quantity and quality of discussion would be.
There’s no ban in place on discussing politics. We do have highly controversial discussion about far out political ideas like neoreactionism.
Indeed, this ban relates to how we discuss topics, not what topics we discuss.
An example would Eliezer’s “Traditional Capitalist Values”, or suicide bombers mentioned in other articles in Sequences.