I’m not going to lie—I always find discussions at LW very intense and rather intimidating. Discussing my and other people’s ideas is bad enough - I personally would rather not expose anything highly personal to the brutally honest scrutiny here.
Users can always start a throwaway account, and post in a thread. That’s done on reddit. It may be more difficult to start a discussion with a throwaway account, but I suppose it could be done. I just discussed this in the open thread. Some etiquette was covered:
Indicate clearly, and from the beginning, that the account you’re using is a throwaway. For example, “this is a throwaway account...”
Use it to discuss topics you don’t want to have your real name, or your regular account linked to, but don’t use it as an excuse to engage Less Wrong at a lower level than you usually do.
Don’t use the throwaway account as a mask to get away with trolling, harassment, bad jokes, vitriol, or not trying to be reasonable.
The community may be indifferent, or sympathetic, but usually not exclusionary. I mean, if somebody is using a throwaway account to discuss why it’s rational for all of us to start hating this one particular outgroup, that would deservedly receive flak. However, maybe someone wants to discuss really signing up for cryonics, but the feel it’s still too weird to have their name publicly linked to it. Or, maybe, they have a problem they believe Less Wrong might be able to solve better than other online, or meatspace, support communities, but they’re embarrassed for people to know it’s them. If I was in that particular sort situation, I would make it clear that I’m already a regular user of Less Wrong, and it’s too harrowing.
However, no user would be obliged to qualify why they’re using a throwaway, even if another user doesn’t have the perspective to understand why a throwaway might feel necessary.
There’s two ways I’m thinking your aversion could be interpreted: not revealing something because mostly you feel it’s personally embarrassing, or not revealing something you because you believe you would be widely negatively judged for it. I tried to offer a solution to the former interpretation of the problem in the other comment. In this comment, I’ll cover what I believe makes sense when you believe you’d be very harshly judged. I don’t believe such aversions to sharing such thoughts are miscalibrated.
I’ll start with an example. When I wrote this above post, when example I was considering using was from one user, not using a real name, who was asking about whether it was worth taking an illegal psychoactive substance for its therapeutic and cognitive effects. Now, I didn’t need to ask anyone’s permission to include their own perspectives as examples, and I still don’t. That’s because nobody does. However, this one user might be linked to their public identity. I’m not mentioning either the username, nor the substance in question, so it’s not searchable. That was an edge case for which I erred to be more discrete, and not very publicly profile someone who asks a more taboo question. They got the answer they wanted, which is what’s important. I wrote the post so individual users would get value for themselves, not ask questions out of a sense of ‘improving the community’, or whatever.
That’s the sort of personal detail that might attract unwanted attention outside of Less Wrong norms. Talking about our own personal politics, or ideological beliefs (fringe-science, social, philosophical, etc.), that aren’t shared by most others isn’t always appreciated on Less Wrong. It’s fine to hold those beliefs if you’re willing to accept you may very well be wrong, but debating such on Less Wrong still seems problematic. However, the community has shifted from “politics is the mind-killer to “politics is hard mode to “we have other sites specifically for discussing controversial topics”.
I’m not going to lie—I always find discussions at LW very intense and rather intimidating. Discussing my and other people’s ideas is bad enough - I personally would rather not expose anything highly personal to the brutally honest scrutiny here.
Users can always start a throwaway account, and post in a thread. That’s done on reddit. It may be more difficult to start a discussion with a throwaway account, but I suppose it could be done. I just discussed this in the open thread. Some etiquette was covered:
Indicate clearly, and from the beginning, that the account you’re using is a throwaway. For example, “this is a throwaway account...”
Use it to discuss topics you don’t want to have your real name, or your regular account linked to, but don’t use it as an excuse to engage Less Wrong at a lower level than you usually do.
Don’t use the throwaway account as a mask to get away with trolling, harassment, bad jokes, vitriol, or not trying to be reasonable.
The community may be indifferent, or sympathetic, but usually not exclusionary. I mean, if somebody is using a throwaway account to discuss why it’s rational for all of us to start hating this one particular outgroup, that would deservedly receive flak. However, maybe someone wants to discuss really signing up for cryonics, but the feel it’s still too weird to have their name publicly linked to it. Or, maybe, they have a problem they believe Less Wrong might be able to solve better than other online, or meatspace, support communities, but they’re embarrassed for people to know it’s them. If I was in that particular sort situation, I would make it clear that I’m already a regular user of Less Wrong, and it’s too harrowing.
However, no user would be obliged to qualify why they’re using a throwaway, even if another user doesn’t have the perspective to understand why a throwaway might feel necessary.
It can also be done without setting up a throwaway account. LW has an anonymous community account (Username) that can be used for this purpose.
username and password are Username and password
Upvoted.
There’s two ways I’m thinking your aversion could be interpreted: not revealing something because mostly you feel it’s personally embarrassing, or not revealing something you because you believe you would be widely negatively judged for it. I tried to offer a solution to the former interpretation of the problem in the other comment. In this comment, I’ll cover what I believe makes sense when you believe you’d be very harshly judged. I don’t believe such aversions to sharing such thoughts are miscalibrated.
I’ll start with an example. When I wrote this above post, when example I was considering using was from one user, not using a real name, who was asking about whether it was worth taking an illegal psychoactive substance for its therapeutic and cognitive effects. Now, I didn’t need to ask anyone’s permission to include their own perspectives as examples, and I still don’t. That’s because nobody does. However, this one user might be linked to their public identity. I’m not mentioning either the username, nor the substance in question, so it’s not searchable. That was an edge case for which I erred to be more discrete, and not very publicly profile someone who asks a more taboo question. They got the answer they wanted, which is what’s important. I wrote the post so individual users would get value for themselves, not ask questions out of a sense of ‘improving the community’, or whatever.
That’s the sort of personal detail that might attract unwanted attention outside of Less Wrong norms. Talking about our own personal politics, or ideological beliefs (fringe-science, social, philosophical, etc.), that aren’t shared by most others isn’t always appreciated on Less Wrong. It’s fine to hold those beliefs if you’re willing to accept you may very well be wrong, but debating such on Less Wrong still seems problematic. However, the community has shifted from “politics is the mind-killer to “politics is hard mode to “we have other sites specifically for discussing controversial topics”.