You seem to be bringing up a hobbyhorse (mentally conflating rationality with “rationalists”) under a post that is at most tangentially related, which I personally think is fine but should be noted as such. (In other words I don’t think this comment is a valid criticism of the OP, if it was intended as such.)
But this doesn’t mean you should think of the vague cluster of people who have been influenced by that book as a coherent group, “rationalists”, the allocation of whose attention is a collective action problem (more so than any other number of similar clusters of people like “biologists”, or “entrepreneurs”, or “people with IQs above 120″).
Given that biologists do in fact face a collective action problem of allocating attention (which they solve using conferences and journals), it seems perfectly fine to me to talk about such a problem for rationalists as well. What is LW2 if not a (partial) solution to such a problem? (Perhaps “entrepreneurs” and “people with IQs above 120″ can’t be said to face such a problem but they’re also much bigger and less cohesive groups than “rationalists” or “biologists”.)
Thanks, the hobbyhorse/derailing concern makes sense. (I noticed that too, but only after I posted the comment.) I think going forward I should endeavor to be much more reserved about impulsively commenting in this equivalence class of situation. A better plan: draft the impulsive comment, but don’t post it, instead saving it as raw material for the future top-level post I was planning to eventually write anyway.
Luckily the karma system was here to keep me accountable and prevent my bad blog comment from showing up too high on the page (3 karma in 21 votes (including a self-strong-upvote), a poor showing for me).
You seem to be bringing up a hobbyhorse (mentally conflating rationality with “rationalists”) under a post that is at most tangentially related, which I personally think is fine but should be noted as such. (In other words I don’t think this comment is a valid criticism of the OP, if it was intended as such.)
Given that biologists do in fact face a collective action problem of allocating attention (which they solve using conferences and journals), it seems perfectly fine to me to talk about such a problem for rationalists as well. What is LW2 if not a (partial) solution to such a problem? (Perhaps “entrepreneurs” and “people with IQs above 120″ can’t be said to face such a problem but they’re also much bigger and less cohesive groups than “rationalists” or “biologists”.)
Thanks, the hobbyhorse/derailing concern makes sense. (I noticed that too, but only after I posted the comment.) I think going forward I should endeavor to be much more reserved about impulsively commenting in this equivalence class of situation. A better plan: draft the impulsive comment, but don’t post it, instead saving it as raw material for the future top-level post I was planning to eventually write anyway.
Luckily the karma system was here to keep me accountable and prevent my bad blog comment from showing up too high on the page (3 karma in 21 votes (including a self-strong-upvote), a poor showing for me).
Actually, jeez, the great-grandparent doesn’t deserve that self-strong-upvote; let me revise that to a no-self-vote.