nearly everyone opposes it, but Eliezer supports it.
I’m not sure which way this bears on the “Lw is just a cult of personality around Eliezer” hypothesis. On the one hand, lots of people opposed Eliezer on something. On the other, we let him get away with this shit and don’t just leave.
I’m not sure which way this bears on the “Lw is just a cult of personality around Eliezer” hypothesis. On the one hand, lots of people opposed Eliezer on something. On the other, we let him get away with this shit and don’t just leave.
Perhaps LW was originally a personality cult around Eliezer and now it just has Eliezer around as historic legacy that is too hard to get rid of for logistical reasons (like namespace ownership). Kind of like the UK still has a Queen as a head of state.
I think it says more about Trike Apps and SI kowtowing to Eliezer than anything.
On reflection, this has made me less inclined to donate to SI than I was before. (I had already been thinking recently that FHI was probably a better organization to donate to for a variety of reasons, ever since I discovered that donations from US citizens to FHI can be tax deductible.)
Well, there’s the obvious answer: this forum exists because people participate in it. If people didn’t participate in it, it would cease to exist. If I value its continued existence (either for its own sake, or for the sake of greater rationality in the world, or for the sake of greater fundraising opportunities, or for whatever reason), then a credible threat of non-participation by a significant fraction of active users threatens something I value, and I might therefore be motivated to change my behavior due to such a threat. One way to make such threats more credible is by demonstrating that users will in fact stop participating over behaviors in a specific class.
I’m not sure which way this bears on the “Lw is just a cult of personality around Eliezer” hypothesis. On the one hand, lots of people opposed Eliezer on something. On the other, we let him get away with this shit and don’t just leave.
Perhaps LW was originally a personality cult around Eliezer and now it just has Eliezer around as historic legacy that is too hard to get rid of for logistical reasons (like namespace ownership). Kind of like the UK still has a Queen as a head of state.
I think it says more about Trike Apps and SI kowtowing to Eliezer than anything.
On reflection, this has made me less inclined to donate to SI than I was before. (I had already been thinking recently that FHI was probably a better organization to donate to for a variety of reasons, ever since I discovered that donations from US citizens to FHI can be tax deductible.)
How would “just leaving” solve anything?
Well, there’s the obvious answer: this forum exists because people participate in it. If people didn’t participate in it, it would cease to exist. If I value its continued existence (either for its own sake, or for the sake of greater rationality in the world, or for the sake of greater fundraising opportunities, or for whatever reason), then a credible threat of non-participation by a significant fraction of active users threatens something I value, and I might therefore be motivated to change my behavior due to such a threat. One way to make such threats more credible is by demonstrating that users will in fact stop participating over behaviors in a specific class.
In addition to what TheOtherDave said, forums are cheap, and we could just as well be on a site without a dictator if we felt like it.