Good day, ladies and gentlemen. I’m still new, still working through the sequences, which is taking me a while because the needs and requirements of accomplishing my goals in life has down-prioritized my reading through Less Wrong. A somewhat appropriate reason for this discussion.
I see an implied assumption in the article, and additionally outright stated in the comments, that Less Wrong needs to create results, that it needs to have more successes, or it should be accomplishing something in its existence.
I disagree. Less Wrong cannot create results, nor can it have successes. It is a passive site. The Less Wrong community would find it difficult to create results or successes, because even with the shared goal of ‘increasing rationality’, there is too much variation in the concept of what that means, and in the individual goals that aim towards that overall shared goal, for the community to be able to accurately track or develop results or successes.
The individual members of Less Wrong can create results, and have successes, and it is for these, I know, that patrissimo is writing. He wishes the members to develop their instrumental rationality, and fears that Less Wrong itself is a detrimental influence upon them.
What’s more, we can also observe that the ability of Less Wrong to aid in Instrumental Rationality is dependent upon what goals you want Less Wrong to help you achieve. If one of your goals is increasing rationality, then it’s VERY appropriate towards developing that goal. If one of your goals is ‘spending less time on the internet’, then it’s very anti-achieving that goal. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s say that we’re trying to use Less Wrong to aid in the goal of improving our Instrumental Rationality, independent of what our other goals are.
That having been said, we can now distinguish between Less Wrong, and the Members of Less wrong. And to that end, no longer speaking of Less Wrong having successes, or having failures, we can observe that Less Wrong is a tool. Let us, then, examine what the qualities of this tool are.
1: The tool is passive. It is used only as much or in the manner that the reader uses it.
2: It has varying levels of use. Someone can browse it lightly, just picking and choosing the articles that interest them. Someone can read through it in a focused and directed manner, researching the ideas within. Someone can read and write to the comments, engaging in the discussions. Someone can become a major contributor, and write articles for the site.
3: It is a reference to other tools. It contains external links that suggest books, sites, activities, and the like—all of which are useful tools in and of themselves.
4: It is flexible. It can be used for a variety of purposes. It can be used for self-inspection, identifying flaws spoken about on the site. It can be used to aid in judging evidence and arguments presented to us in the world around us. It can be used for fun and social activity. And that discussion can be a practice in technique.
And my proposal would be that it is not anti-Instrumental Rationality—it is merely neutral, as any tool, and depends upon the reader using the site correctly.
I would present myself as an example of the contrary. Less Wrong has increased my Instrumental Rationality, even though I have not used it a lot. (You might argue because I have not used it a lot.) One of my goals is to become more rational—to develop and practice rationality. I was doing as well as I could, by myself, but was stymied, because many of the things I was trying to do were stuck in mental loops. I had the problem in that I suspected I could not be the first to think of the things I was thinking of, but didn’t know where to go to research it, what books to read, which authors or philosophers to explore.
Within an hour of reading LessWrong, I found in the community the answers to those problems. I found that one of my biggest goals—trying to quantify and qualify the primary focuses of rational discussion—had already been done in Eliezer’s 12 Virtues of Rationality. I found references to pursue, and discussions that illustrated both sides that I’d been trying to hold up to each other, myself.
I used Less Wrong as a resource, as a tool, which improved my time usage and helped me keep from having to figure a lot of stuff out, myself. And to that end, I call a success in Instrumental Rationality.
Good day, ladies and gentlemen. I’m still new, still working through the sequences, which is taking me a while because the needs and requirements of accomplishing my goals in life has down-prioritized my reading through Less Wrong. A somewhat appropriate reason for this discussion.
I see an implied assumption in the article, and additionally outright stated in the comments, that Less Wrong needs to create results, that it needs to have more successes, or it should be accomplishing something in its existence.
I disagree. Less Wrong cannot create results, nor can it have successes. It is a passive site. The Less Wrong community would find it difficult to create results or successes, because even with the shared goal of ‘increasing rationality’, there is too much variation in the concept of what that means, and in the individual goals that aim towards that overall shared goal, for the community to be able to accurately track or develop results or successes.
The individual members of Less Wrong can create results, and have successes, and it is for these, I know, that patrissimo is writing. He wishes the members to develop their instrumental rationality, and fears that Less Wrong itself is a detrimental influence upon them.
What’s more, we can also observe that the ability of Less Wrong to aid in Instrumental Rationality is dependent upon what goals you want Less Wrong to help you achieve. If one of your goals is increasing rationality, then it’s VERY appropriate towards developing that goal. If one of your goals is ‘spending less time on the internet’, then it’s very anti-achieving that goal. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s say that we’re trying to use Less Wrong to aid in the goal of improving our Instrumental Rationality, independent of what our other goals are.
That having been said, we can now distinguish between Less Wrong, and the Members of Less wrong. And to that end, no longer speaking of Less Wrong having successes, or having failures, we can observe that Less Wrong is a tool. Let us, then, examine what the qualities of this tool are.
1: The tool is passive. It is used only as much or in the manner that the reader uses it. 2: It has varying levels of use. Someone can browse it lightly, just picking and choosing the articles that interest them. Someone can read through it in a focused and directed manner, researching the ideas within. Someone can read and write to the comments, engaging in the discussions. Someone can become a major contributor, and write articles for the site. 3: It is a reference to other tools. It contains external links that suggest books, sites, activities, and the like—all of which are useful tools in and of themselves. 4: It is flexible. It can be used for a variety of purposes. It can be used for self-inspection, identifying flaws spoken about on the site. It can be used to aid in judging evidence and arguments presented to us in the world around us. It can be used for fun and social activity. And that discussion can be a practice in technique.
And my proposal would be that it is not anti-Instrumental Rationality—it is merely neutral, as any tool, and depends upon the reader using the site correctly.
I would present myself as an example of the contrary. Less Wrong has increased my Instrumental Rationality, even though I have not used it a lot. (You might argue because I have not used it a lot.) One of my goals is to become more rational—to develop and practice rationality. I was doing as well as I could, by myself, but was stymied, because many of the things I was trying to do were stuck in mental loops. I had the problem in that I suspected I could not be the first to think of the things I was thinking of, but didn’t know where to go to research it, what books to read, which authors or philosophers to explore.
Within an hour of reading LessWrong, I found in the community the answers to those problems. I found that one of my biggest goals—trying to quantify and qualify the primary focuses of rational discussion—had already been done in Eliezer’s 12 Virtues of Rationality. I found references to pursue, and discussions that illustrated both sides that I’d been trying to hold up to each other, myself.
I used Less Wrong as a resource, as a tool, which improved my time usage and helped me keep from having to figure a lot of stuff out, myself. And to that end, I call a success in Instrumental Rationality.