The ones you’re not paying turn up because they have some specific thing to say that they think will be interesting (e.g., about the relationship between religion and rationality). They behave more or less like typical Less Wrong participants.
The ones you’re paying turn up to gush in the comments to your articles about how wonderful the articles are, and how great Intentional Insights is, and how excited they are to be growing in rationality (without any specifics about what they’ve actually learned and how it’s helping them). They behave more or less like typical blog comment spammers.
Additionally, the individuals who suspect Gleb of manipulating upvotes to try to be taken more seriously all just updated.
I defended a post as not representing Less Wrong because it was massively downvoted, demonstrating the community attitude towards the post. The reciprocal—that upvotes equate to community support—clearly doesn’t hold, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and point.
If I was interested in manipulating upvotes, it would much more easy for me to create sock puppets or have volunteers/virtual assistants create sock puppets than have people take their time to introduce themselves and engage with Less Wrong.
“That’s not how I would do it” generally is not the best way to respond to something you take as an accusation. Especially when you include a novel element in your protest, namely, the “have volunteers/virtual assistances create sock puppets” piece.
Firstly, because you don’t want to share those kinds of ideas. Secondly, because you’ve added details to a story you’re trying to repudiate, making it seem more likely.
Like I said, it’s not surprising that they expressed enthusiasm about the idea and content of Intentional Insights. They found out about rationality from InIn, and are volunteering about 2⁄3 of their time on average, because they’re enthusiastic about this topic.
Blog comment spammers usually promote something with a link attached. These people involved with InIn take the time to introduce themselves and describe their perspectives, and do not post links.
More broadly, like I said earlier, InIn is an outward-facing arm of the rationality movement, not an inward-facing one. There’s no need or interest for InIn to promote its content to LWs.
The differences are rather stark.
The ones you’re not paying turn up because they have some specific thing to say that they think will be interesting (e.g., about the relationship between religion and rationality). They behave more or less like typical Less Wrong participants.
The ones you’re paying turn up to gush in the comments to your articles about how wonderful the articles are, and how great Intentional Insights is, and how excited they are to be growing in rationality (without any specifics about what they’ve actually learned and how it’s helping them). They behave more or less like typical blog comment spammers.
Additionally, the individuals who suspect Gleb of manipulating upvotes to try to be taken more seriously all just updated.
I defended a post as not representing Less Wrong because it was massively downvoted, demonstrating the community attitude towards the post. The reciprocal—that upvotes equate to community support—clearly doesn’t hold, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and point.
If I was interested in manipulating upvotes, it would much more easy for me to create sock puppets or have volunteers/virtual assistants create sock puppets than have people take their time to introduce themselves and engage with Less Wrong.
“That’s not how I would do it” generally is not the best way to respond to something you take as an accusation. Especially when you include a novel element in your protest, namely, the “have volunteers/virtual assistances create sock puppets” piece.
Firstly, because you don’t want to share those kinds of ideas. Secondly, because you’ve added details to a story you’re trying to repudiate, making it seem more likely.
Good points, upvoted. I fall into this trap too often. Thanks for the helpful suggestions!
Like I said, it’s not surprising that they expressed enthusiasm about the idea and content of Intentional Insights. They found out about rationality from InIn, and are volunteering about 2⁄3 of their time on average, because they’re enthusiastic about this topic.
Blog comment spammers usually promote something with a link attached. These people involved with InIn take the time to introduce themselves and describe their perspectives, and do not post links.
More broadly, like I said earlier, InIn is an outward-facing arm of the rationality movement, not an inward-facing one. There’s no need or interest for InIn to promote its content to LWs.