My first impression of lesswrong was of a community devoted to pop science, sci-fi, and futurism. Also, around that time singulartian was getting a bad name for good reasons (but it was the Kurzweil kind d’oh), and so I closed the tab thinking I wasn’t missing anything interesting. It wasn’t until years later when I was getting tired of the ignorance and arrogance of the skeptic community that I found my way back to lesswrong with some linked post that showed careful, honest thinking.
It would be a good idea to put up a highly visible link on the front page addressing new visitors’ immediate criticisms. For example:
Is this place a Kurzweil fanclub?
Are you guys pulling most of the content on this site out of your ass?
Why should I care what you people have to say? The people here seem weird.
I think most of what you people believe is bullshit, am I not welcome here?
Another thing, the layout of this site will take people more than ten seconds to grok which is enough to have most people just leave. For instance, I’d rename ‘discussion’ to ‘forum’ and ‘main’ to ‘rationality blog’ or just ‘blog’.
Are you guys pulling most of the content on this site out of your ass?
This is a little hard to answer because we are pulling it some of it from there. For instance, while my most upvoted post briefly mentions some mainstream science, most of it is just speculation. Similarly for this, this, and this. They’re are all promoted and reasonably upvoted-posts of mine and while I hope that they’re not very badly wrong, I don’t remember drawing on much mainstream science for them.
HAMLET. Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not ‘seems.’
The people here are weird, even by the standards of other rationalist communities, which of course are a bunch of big weirdos themselves by the standards of the general population.
If you’re here, you’re a big weirdo by conventional standards. Get over it.
But know that there’s something a lot worse than being a weirdo—forgetting who you are, and trying to be something you’re not. I think I did that. It’s hard to be a weirdo alone. Always cutting against the grain. Never quite feeling understood. The worst is feeling that the best of you is not appreciated.
Harry Browne had a classic pop egoist book, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. One very good bit of advice. Be who you are, and advertise who you are. Let your natural market come to you, instead of trying package yourself for a market that really doesn’t value you.
Lots of talk about akrasia here. In my case, I’m sure a big part of it was trying to package myself for the approval of others, instead of being and doing what I wanted. How could I possibly have motivation for a life I didn’t actually want?
We are not a Phyg! We are not a Phyg!
Stop worrying about how people with different values see this place, and start worrying about how to connect to people with the same values. Sell to your natural market.
“Want” seems insufficiently reflective, it suggests present opinion on the matter rather than an accurate estimate, whatever that turns out to be, and however well it can be known in practice (which is what I meant). To do as you should is to do the right thing (as opposed to the pebble-sorting thing, say).
To unpack a bit: there is this wanting/liking/approving distinction that already places “wanting” in the wrong corner, but even after that there is a level of reflection distinction between what more explicitly drives your behavior (or evaluation of your behavior) and how you would respond given more time and thought.
Certainly as an overarching strategy, when one considers that others’ opinions and reactions matter, this seems mostly suboptimal.
But in a variety of arenas (for me: amongst colleagues; with romantic partners; when making new friends) this can be extremely effective as an approximation for more ideal strategies such as “have confidence,” “be consistent,” and “demonstrate that you’re having fun.”
I’m pretty weird: when I first meet people I talk about the meaning of beauty in mathematics and problems with academic philosophy; I LARP and play pokemon and half of my T-shirts are references to obscure webcomics.
But when I teach, this gives me funny anecdotes to share with my students. When I date, this gives me confidence and happiness to share. When I study it gives me enthusiasm and keeps smart people interested in me.
So I would say, at the very least, try out the whole “be who you are, loudly and unapologetically” thing and see how it works. Maybe I live in a fantastic fantasy land but it often pays to try things out rather than countersignalling.
I would say it depends a lot on who I am and where I am.
For example… the “weird” behavior cluster you describe (focusing social interaction on academic topics, a fondness for LARPing and webcomics, clothing as a verbal messaging medium) is pretty standard around higher-end tech universities, for example, along with a few other traits (e.g., science-fiction fandom or a fondness for medieval reenactment). Back when I was a college student, I adopted a number of those mannerisms as a way of marking myself part of the “weird” tribe, and gave a number of them up after I graduated when there was no longer any particular benefit to them.
So someone for whom that “weird” cluster happens to express “who they really are” is in the incredibly fortunate position of happening to “really be” a way that has a lot of advantages within a particular subculture. If you haven’t already done so, I recommend becoming involved with that subculture, you will likely find it very affirming. (Science-fiction conventions are a good place to start, if you don’t have any appropriate university campuses near you.)
For people in the less fortunate position of being “weird” in a way that doesn’t have that kind of community support, different strategies can be optimal.
For context, my current companion is not openly gay at work because he (correctly) predicts that it will have a significantly negative net effect on his career, despite whatever social/legal framework exists to prevent that from happening.
So in short, yes, you do live in a fantastic fantasy land where you aren’t heavily punished for being who you are.
I’d say that I would try to enjoy my fantasy land even more due to the people who don’t share my circumstances, but I actually already knew all that and already do.
I hope your companion gets to find his own fantasy land some day.
Looks like this gone straight to the hardest problems in the world (I can’t see successful practice on easier problems that are not trivial).
This site has captcha, a challenge that people easily solve but bots don’t. Despite the possibility that some blind guy would not post a world changing insight because of it, and the FAI effort would go the wrong way, and we all die. That is not seen as irrational. Many smart people, likewise, usually implement an ‘arrogant newbie filter’; a genius can rather easily solve things that other smart people can’t...
It is kind of hypocritical (and irrational) to assume stupid bot if captcha is not answered, but expects others to assume genius when no challenges were solved. Of course not everyone is filtering, and via internet you can reach plenty of people who won’t filter for this reason or that, or people who will only look at superficial signals, but to exploit this is not good.
My first impression of lesswrong was of a community devoted to pop science, sci-fi, and futurism. Also, around that time singulartian was getting a bad name for good reasons (but it was the Kurzweil kind d’oh), and so I closed the tab thinking I wasn’t missing anything interesting. It wasn’t until years later when I was getting tired of the ignorance and arrogance of the skeptic community that I found my way back to lesswrong with some linked post that showed careful, honest thinking.
It would be a good idea to put up a highly visible link on the front page addressing new visitors’ immediate criticisms. For example:
Is this place a Kurzweil fanclub?
Are you guys pulling most of the content on this site out of your ass?
Why should I care what you people have to say? The people here seem weird.
I think most of what you people believe is bullshit, am I not welcome here?
Another thing, the layout of this site will take people more than ten seconds to grok which is enough to have most people just leave. For instance, I’d rename ‘discussion’ to ‘forum’ and ‘main’ to ‘rationality blog’ or just ‘blog’.
This is a great idea.
This is a little hard to answer because we are pulling it some of it from there. For instance, while my most upvoted post briefly mentions some mainstream science, most of it is just speculation. Similarly for this, this, and this. They’re are all promoted and reasonably upvoted-posts of mine and while I hope that they’re not very badly wrong, I don’t remember drawing on much mainstream science for them.
HAMLET. Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not ‘seems.’
The people here are weird, even by the standards of other rationalist communities, which of course are a bunch of big weirdos themselves by the standards of the general population.
If you’re here, you’re a big weirdo by conventional standards. Get over it.
But know that there’s something a lot worse than being a weirdo—forgetting who you are, and trying to be something you’re not. I think I did that. It’s hard to be a weirdo alone. Always cutting against the grain. Never quite feeling understood. The worst is feeling that the best of you is not appreciated.
Harry Browne had a classic pop egoist book, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. One very good bit of advice. Be who you are, and advertise who you are. Let your natural market come to you, instead of trying package yourself for a market that really doesn’t value you.
Lots of talk about akrasia here. In my case, I’m sure a big part of it was trying to package myself for the approval of others, instead of being and doing what I wanted. How could I possibly have motivation for a life I didn’t actually want?
We are not a Phyg! We are not a Phyg!
Stop worrying about how people with different values see this place, and start worrying about how to connect to people with the same values. Sell to your natural market.
Be who you are, Loudly and Unapologetically.
Keep your (status quo) identity small, don’t be who you are, strive to be who you should be.
Given the historical usage of “should”, I can’t endorse this. Instead, I’d go with “become who you want to be”.
“Want” seems insufficiently reflective, it suggests present opinion on the matter rather than an accurate estimate, whatever that turns out to be, and however well it can be known in practice (which is what I meant). To do as you should is to do the right thing (as opposed to the pebble-sorting thing, say).
To unpack a bit: there is this wanting/liking/approving distinction that already places “wanting” in the wrong corner, but even after that there is a level of reflection distinction between what more explicitly drives your behavior (or evaluation of your behavior) and how you would respond given more time and thought.
Seems like this is mostly suboptimal.
Certainly as an overarching strategy, when one considers that others’ opinions and reactions matter, this seems mostly suboptimal.
But in a variety of arenas (for me: amongst colleagues; with romantic partners; when making new friends) this can be extremely effective as an approximation for more ideal strategies such as “have confidence,” “be consistent,” and “demonstrate that you’re having fun.”
I’m pretty weird: when I first meet people I talk about the meaning of beauty in mathematics and problems with academic philosophy; I LARP and play pokemon and half of my T-shirts are references to obscure webcomics.
But when I teach, this gives me funny anecdotes to share with my students. When I date, this gives me confidence and happiness to share. When I study it gives me enthusiasm and keeps smart people interested in me.
So I would say, at the very least, try out the whole “be who you are, loudly and unapologetically” thing and see how it works. Maybe I live in a fantastic fantasy land but it often pays to try things out rather than countersignalling.
I would say it depends a lot on who I am and where I am.
For example… the “weird” behavior cluster you describe (focusing social interaction on academic topics, a fondness for LARPing and webcomics, clothing as a verbal messaging medium) is pretty standard around higher-end tech universities, for example, along with a few other traits (e.g., science-fiction fandom or a fondness for medieval reenactment). Back when I was a college student, I adopted a number of those mannerisms as a way of marking myself part of the “weird” tribe, and gave a number of them up after I graduated when there was no longer any particular benefit to them.
So someone for whom that “weird” cluster happens to express “who they really are” is in the incredibly fortunate position of happening to “really be” a way that has a lot of advantages within a particular subculture. If you haven’t already done so, I recommend becoming involved with that subculture, you will likely find it very affirming. (Science-fiction conventions are a good place to start, if you don’t have any appropriate university campuses near you.)
For people in the less fortunate position of being “weird” in a way that doesn’t have that kind of community support, different strategies can be optimal.
For context, my current companion is not openly gay at work because he (correctly) predicts that it will have a significantly negative net effect on his career, despite whatever social/legal framework exists to prevent that from happening.
So in short, yes, you do live in a fantastic fantasy land where you aren’t heavily punished for being who you are.
I’m sorry to hear that.
I’d say that I would try to enjoy my fantasy land even more due to the people who don’t share my circumstances, but I actually already knew all that and already do.
I hope your companion gets to find his own fantasy land some day.
TBH, I’d rather listen to Kurzweil… I mean, he did create reading OCR software, and other cool stuff. Here we have:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/6dr/discussion_yudowskys_actual_accomplishments/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/bvg/a_question_about_eliezer/
Looks like this gone straight to the hardest problems in the world (I can’t see successful practice on easier problems that are not trivial).
This site has captcha, a challenge that people easily solve but bots don’t. Despite the possibility that some blind guy would not post a world changing insight because of it, and the FAI effort would go the wrong way, and we all die. That is not seen as irrational. Many smart people, likewise, usually implement an ‘arrogant newbie filter’; a genius can rather easily solve things that other smart people can’t...
It is kind of hypocritical (and irrational) to assume stupid bot if captcha is not answered, but expects others to assume genius when no challenges were solved. Of course not everyone is filtering, and via internet you can reach plenty of people who won’t filter for this reason or that, or people who will only look at superficial signals, but to exploit this is not good.