My first thoughts were that this group feels “cliquey”. There are a lot of in-phrases and technical jargon floating around, which to an outsider can be very intimidating.
This is a feature, not a bug. If you spend a day discussing, say, Newcomb’s problem, and it doesn’t change the way you think and speak about similar situations in the future—if you don’t find easier, faster ways of describing the situation, which were previously unavailable to you—then you’ve probably wasted a day.
The effect this has on newcomers is a bug though. Hopefully the Wiki, once it’s active and fully implemented, will help to address this.
On top of that every incorrect comment is completely and utterly destroyed by multiple people.
I desperately wish that there were a way to emotionally differentiate between attacking a meme someone is carrying and attacking a person.
This is a feature, not a bug. If you spend a day discussing, say, Newcomb’s problem, and it doesn’t change the way you think and speak about similar situations in the future—if you don’t find easier, faster ways of describing the situation, which were previously unavailable to you—then you’ve probably wasted a day.
I don’t agree with this. Maybe it is because I am new, but I spend half of my time here translating everything into a more common language. I find it easier to keep track of different arguments and reasonings once I translate it into the linguistic matrix I have been using to learn about everything else in my life.
Brand new concepts need new words and terms, but Newcomb’s problem isn’t one of them. The term “one-box” is jargon. “Omega” is jargon. It speeds up discussion on Less Wrong, not the real world. If I translate those terms into short sentences I can begin to have the conversation with anyone and the reusable terms will bump into topics I remember from other conversations I have had with people outside of Less Wrong and I see no harm in typing four words instead of one.
To beat this to death: If I always talk about Omega as “Omega,” I think about it as Omega. If I think of Omega has someone who has a perfect guessing rate at what I am going to do, this reminds me of omniscience and that reminds me of how a lot of Christians view their God. Is there any relation between Newcomb’s problem and God? Who knows, but it seems an interesting train of thought. If I end up talking to a Christian about Newcomb’s problem and they state that Omega seems like God I have a better recourse already in place than simply saying, “No, Omega is Omega; not God.”
That being said, I have to register the terms “Omega” and “one-box” because I am engaging in conversations here at LW. But even if I spent all day talking about Newcomb’s problem using these new terms, I do not consider the point of the conversation to have the same conversation faster or easier. Neither do I consider the point to be having similar future conversations faster or easier. Faster and easier are luxuries; they are icing on the cake. I want to learn new concepts and I consider this to be very different than learning new jargon.
Backing up a little, “cliquey” holds negative connotations. In-phrases and technical jargon can be useful but I have also seen other communities latch onto their jargon and begin to skim over what would be relevant distinctions. It also forces newcomers to learn from the top down because they see a lot of words they do not understand. They register the jargon in their linguistic matrix and assign it an estimated meaning due to context. Eventually they can learn that some terms apply in certain circumstances, but they will never understand the concept until someone teaches it to them or they head off to the wiki and look it up.
This site is not newcomer friendly and that in and of itself is not a problem. Newcomers are justified in feeling intimidated because it is intimidating but there is a difference between the subject matter being intimidating and the community being intimidating. If the community is the source of a lot of intimidation because it feels cliquey, that is a bad thing. Labeling it a feature does not make it less of a bad thing.
(Side-note) I have also seen communities “name-drop” terms in attempts at status. That seems less of a concern here.
(Side-note) I have also seen communities “name-drop” terms in attempts at status. That seems less of a concern here.
Agreed. I know that when I’m talking with philosophers I tend to use their special prepositions (“On X’s view...”, “Y consists in...”) to sound more in-groupy and thus give extra weight to my arguments.
On OB/LW this primarily takes the form (started by Eliezer, I think) of embedding a link to a previous article in every other sentence, which certainly comes off as intimidating, at least to me.
On OB/LW this primarily takes the form (started by Eliezer, I think) of embedding a link to a previous article in every other sentence, which certainly comes off as intimidating, at least to me.
That’s interesting—I quite enjoy that convention, and feel like it makes the site more penetrable to newcomers. To me, the purpose of the links seems to be “if this sentence seems to follow from the last, keep reading. If I seem to have made an unsupported leap, you may profit by following the link.”
It’s nice for reading, yes (although it does mean that reading one Eliezer post can quickly turn into eight tabs’ worth of previous posts), but when it comes to writing a post (or even a comment), I feel like if I don’t have a bunch of references I’m leaving myself open to accusations of “Oh, that point was addressed here, here, and here. Try doing some reading.”
Which might not be a bad thing, necessarily: it’s certainly not too productive to be constantly going over the same ground as MrHen says below, but it certainly does affect what I choose to write.
reading one Eliezer post can quickly turn into eight tabs’ worth of previous posts
I spent a lot of happy afternoons this way last year (didn’t get much done on my quantum problem sets though)
but when it comes to writing a post (or even a comment), I feel like if I don’t have a bunch of references I’m leaving myself open to accusations of “Oh, that point was addressed here, here, and here. Try doing some reading.”
Ah, this I totally get. I think this might be a good function for the welcome thread—you could just leave a comment saying “hi, I’m thinking about writing something about X—is there anything I ought to be reading first?”
Ah, this I totally get. I think this might be a good function for the welcome thread—you could just leave a comment saying “hi, I’m thinking about writing something about X—is there anything I ought to be reading first?”
I imagine that some of this task will be handled by the wiki or the tags assigned to each post.
That being said, I have little problem with someone talking about a topic that was broached seventy times previously as long as it either adds a new perspective or is a decent summary or launching point for people not there during the past discussions.
That being said, having “little problem with” may mean I will not read it because I consider the topic saturated.
On OB/LW this primarily takes the form (started by Eliezer, I think) of embedding a link to a previous article in every other sentence, which certainly comes off as intimidating, at least to me.
It’s interesting to see how that comes across to you. When I include links one of my motivations is actually to towards less exclusiveness. Something along the lines of “I’m using this term but acknowledge that it is in group jargon. Here’s the several pages of text I saved reproducing for anyone who wants it.” I usually associate the in group status game with making it difficult to get information and so ensuring that you can gain status through every piece of knowledge the newcomers must aquire. Why show them where to learn stuff when you could be shooting them down every time they speak?
It’s interesting to see how that comes across to you. When I include links one of my motivations is actually to towards less exclusiveness. Something along the lines of “I’m using this term but acknowledge that it is in group jargon. Here’s the several pages of text I saved reproducing for anyone who wants it.” I usually associate the in group status game with making it difficult to get information and so ensuring that you can gain status through every piece of knowledge the newcomers must aquire.
When Eliezer does it, I interpret it as a desire not to repeat himself. When other people do it, sometimes my first impression is that the person is implying they are better-read and more knowledgeable, i.e., that they’re trying to signal superior status by implying “I have been here longer and know more,” as well as implying a stronger in-group affiliation, by the amount of work they’ve done to dig up appropriate scriptures and link to them.
The tone of the non-linked portion of the comment of course makes a big difference, of course. “Have you read XYZ? It seems to me like what you’re saying contradicts point Q; how would you address that?” would be a lot different than some of the comments I’ve seen that look like trying to win an argument by the volume of their citations.
I think I see it as something between you two. I sometimes see it as “I agree with these articles so these articles agree with me.” This probably qualifies as a weird form of appealing to authority.
To make it fit better with your view, “If I put my article in a list of their articles I am like them.”
The charitable side of me thinks of it as tracing someone’s train of thought backwards. “Oh, so that’s why they were thinking about this subject.”
I get link fatigue when read LW/OB. But I think it’s unavoidable. It has to be done for at least two reasons:
There’s a lot of conceptual “bittage”. As the writer, you not only have to close the inferential gap between new concepts, but close it for every new word. That’s a lot to explain (and to see, if a new reader) at once.
The medium of blogging wasn’t designed to visualize information of this depth.
Agreed. I know that when I’m talking with philosophers I tend to use their special prepositions (“On X’s view...”, “Y consists in...”) to sound more in-groupy and thus give extra weight to my arguments.
Yeah, my philosophy classes had a lot of people who would skip over discussions by using a well-known name. This is similar to what Andrew’s You don’t need Kant post was talking about.
That being said, the other extreme is not terribly useful, either. I have trouble remembering philosopher’s names because the arguments and logic are more interesting and I never bothered associating it with the person who was speaking. As it turns out, I spend a lot of time going over ground that has already been covered because I did not learn the shortcut term.
This could be seen as a counter-point to my comment above.
I didn’t actually mean that it makes it easier to talk about Newcomb’s problem, more that if, say, we’re talking about the Israeli government dealing with a hostage situation, and someone says the Israelis should “one-box,” they mean to communicate that “not only the effects on the current situation, but the impact their decision-making process will have on others trying to predict their actions, should be salient to their decision”
Funny, I would not have associated one-boxing to mean what you described. I assumed that it only really matters when dealing with a perfect predictor. Apparently I missed some form of “action implies predicability” side of the discussion? In any case, looks like I get to go do some research/thinking. Thanks.
I didn’t actually mean that it makes it easier to talk about Newcomb’s problem [...]
Ah, okay. Thanks for the clarification. I think my points more or less stand as is but could probably have been less targeted at the Newcomb’s problem example.
(Topic branch) Something I personally do dodge issues in terms is to rotate synonyms throughout a discussion to troll for bad assumptions in terms. If anyone gets a “Wait, what?” look on their face it means we may not be on the same page.
Something I personally do dodge issues in terms is to rotate synonyms throughout a discussion to troll for bad assumptions in terms. If anyone gets a “Wait, what?” look on their face it means we may not be on the same page.
We have a styled and integrated wiki under development, but it’s on the same platform as the current wiki—we’ll pull in all content from the current wiki when we finish. Full support for ciphergoth’s sentiments from the devs—go forth and enwiki the good stuff.
We may look into it later, but we’re not currently looking to merge user accounts. LW is Python, MediaWiki is PHP; the database formats are different; we don’t generally love working in PHP; etc.
Both will continue to be open source projects (of course), so contributions will be welcome :).
This is a feature, not a bug. If you spend a day discussing, say, Newcomb’s problem, and it doesn’t change the way you think and speak about similar situations in the future—if you don’t find easier, faster ways of describing the situation, which were previously unavailable to you—then you’ve probably wasted a day.
The effect this has on newcomers is a bug though. Hopefully the Wiki, once it’s active and fully implemented, will help to address this.
I desperately wish that there were a way to emotionally differentiate between attacking a meme someone is carrying and attacking a person.
I don’t agree with this. Maybe it is because I am new, but I spend half of my time here translating everything into a more common language. I find it easier to keep track of different arguments and reasonings once I translate it into the linguistic matrix I have been using to learn about everything else in my life.
Brand new concepts need new words and terms, but Newcomb’s problem isn’t one of them. The term “one-box” is jargon. “Omega” is jargon. It speeds up discussion on Less Wrong, not the real world. If I translate those terms into short sentences I can begin to have the conversation with anyone and the reusable terms will bump into topics I remember from other conversations I have had with people outside of Less Wrong and I see no harm in typing four words instead of one.
To beat this to death: If I always talk about Omega as “Omega,” I think about it as Omega. If I think of Omega has someone who has a perfect guessing rate at what I am going to do, this reminds me of omniscience and that reminds me of how a lot of Christians view their God. Is there any relation between Newcomb’s problem and God? Who knows, but it seems an interesting train of thought. If I end up talking to a Christian about Newcomb’s problem and they state that Omega seems like God I have a better recourse already in place than simply saying, “No, Omega is Omega; not God.”
That being said, I have to register the terms “Omega” and “one-box” because I am engaging in conversations here at LW. But even if I spent all day talking about Newcomb’s problem using these new terms, I do not consider the point of the conversation to have the same conversation faster or easier. Neither do I consider the point to be having similar future conversations faster or easier. Faster and easier are luxuries; they are icing on the cake. I want to learn new concepts and I consider this to be very different than learning new jargon.
Backing up a little, “cliquey” holds negative connotations. In-phrases and technical jargon can be useful but I have also seen other communities latch onto their jargon and begin to skim over what would be relevant distinctions. It also forces newcomers to learn from the top down because they see a lot of words they do not understand. They register the jargon in their linguistic matrix and assign it an estimated meaning due to context. Eventually they can learn that some terms apply in certain circumstances, but they will never understand the concept until someone teaches it to them or they head off to the wiki and look it up.
This site is not newcomer friendly and that in and of itself is not a problem. Newcomers are justified in feeling intimidated because it is intimidating but there is a difference between the subject matter being intimidating and the community being intimidating. If the community is the source of a lot of intimidation because it feels cliquey, that is a bad thing. Labeling it a feature does not make it less of a bad thing.
(Side-note) I have also seen communities “name-drop” terms in attempts at status. That seems less of a concern here.
Agreed. I know that when I’m talking with philosophers I tend to use their special prepositions (“On X’s view...”, “Y consists in...”) to sound more in-groupy and thus give extra weight to my arguments.
On OB/LW this primarily takes the form (started by Eliezer, I think) of embedding a link to a previous article in every other sentence, which certainly comes off as intimidating, at least to me.
That’s interesting—I quite enjoy that convention, and feel like it makes the site more penetrable to newcomers. To me, the purpose of the links seems to be “if this sentence seems to follow from the last, keep reading. If I seem to have made an unsupported leap, you may profit by following the link.”
It’s nice for reading, yes (although it does mean that reading one Eliezer post can quickly turn into eight tabs’ worth of previous posts), but when it comes to writing a post (or even a comment), I feel like if I don’t have a bunch of references I’m leaving myself open to accusations of “Oh, that point was addressed here, here, and here. Try doing some reading.”
Which might not be a bad thing, necessarily: it’s certainly not too productive to be constantly going over the same ground as MrHen says below, but it certainly does affect what I choose to write.
I spent a lot of happy afternoons this way last year (didn’t get much done on my quantum problem sets though)
Ah, this I totally get. I think this might be a good function for the welcome thread—you could just leave a comment saying “hi, I’m thinking about writing something about X—is there anything I ought to be reading first?”
I imagine that some of this task will be handled by the wiki or the tags assigned to each post.
That being said, I have little problem with someone talking about a topic that was broached seventy times previously as long as it either adds a new perspective or is a decent summary or launching point for people not there during the past discussions.
That being said, having “little problem with” may mean I will not read it because I consider the topic saturated.
It’s interesting to see how that comes across to you. When I include links one of my motivations is actually to towards less exclusiveness. Something along the lines of “I’m using this term but acknowledge that it is in group jargon. Here’s the several pages of text I saved reproducing for anyone who wants it.” I usually associate the in group status game with making it difficult to get information and so ensuring that you can gain status through every piece of knowledge the newcomers must aquire. Why show them where to learn stuff when you could be shooting them down every time they speak?
When Eliezer does it, I interpret it as a desire not to repeat himself. When other people do it, sometimes my first impression is that the person is implying they are better-read and more knowledgeable, i.e., that they’re trying to signal superior status by implying “I have been here longer and know more,” as well as implying a stronger in-group affiliation, by the amount of work they’ve done to dig up appropriate scriptures and link to them.
The tone of the non-linked portion of the comment of course makes a big difference, of course. “Have you read XYZ? It seems to me like what you’re saying contradicts point Q; how would you address that?” would be a lot different than some of the comments I’ve seen that look like trying to win an argument by the volume of their citations.
I think I see it as something between you two. I sometimes see it as “I agree with these articles so these articles agree with me.” This probably qualifies as a weird form of appealing to authority.
To make it fit better with your view, “If I put my article in a list of their articles I am like them.”
The charitable side of me thinks of it as tracing someone’s train of thought backwards. “Oh, so that’s why they were thinking about this subject.”
Yup—especially when the linked-to post doesn’t actually support what they were trying to say. I sometimes see it as a form of thought-stoppage.
I get link fatigue when read LW/OB. But I think it’s unavoidable. It has to be done for at least two reasons:
There’s a lot of conceptual “bittage”. As the writer, you not only have to close the inferential gap between new concepts, but close it for every new word. That’s a lot to explain (and to see, if a new reader) at once.
The medium of blogging wasn’t designed to visualize information of this depth.
And that means heavy link back.
Yeah, my philosophy classes had a lot of people who would skip over discussions by using a well-known name. This is similar to what Andrew’s You don’t need Kant post was talking about.
That being said, the other extreme is not terribly useful, either. I have trouble remembering philosopher’s names because the arguments and logic are more interesting and I never bothered associating it with the person who was speaking. As it turns out, I spend a lot of time going over ground that has already been covered because I did not learn the shortcut term.
This could be seen as a counter-point to my comment above.
I didn’t actually mean that it makes it easier to talk about Newcomb’s problem, more that if, say, we’re talking about the Israeli government dealing with a hostage situation, and someone says the Israelis should “one-box,” they mean to communicate that “not only the effects on the current situation, but the impact their decision-making process will have on others trying to predict their actions, should be salient to their decision”
Funny, I would not have associated one-boxing to mean what you described. I assumed that it only really matters when dealing with a perfect predictor. Apparently I missed some form of “action implies predicability” side of the discussion? In any case, looks like I get to go do some research/thinking. Thanks.
Ah, okay. Thanks for the clarification. I think my points more or less stand as is but could probably have been less targeted at the Newcomb’s problem example.
(Topic branch) Something I personally do dodge issues in terms is to rotate synonyms throughout a discussion to troll for bad assumptions in terms. If anyone gets a “Wait, what?” look on their face it means we may not be on the same page.
That is an excellent idea.
The wiki is entirely ready to go; all it needs is more contributions.
We have a styled and integrated wiki under development, but it’s on the same platform as the current wiki—we’ll pull in all content from the current wiki when we finish. Full support for ciphergoth’s sentiments from the devs—go forth and enwiki the good stuff.
Will it cause you any trouble that not all users have the same username on the wiki as they do here?
We may look into it later, but we’re not currently looking to merge user accounts. LW is Python, MediaWiki is PHP; the database formats are different; we don’t generally love working in PHP; etc.
Both will continue to be open source projects (of course), so contributions will be welcome :).
I think MediaWiki has some provision for supporting SSO, but yeah, I don’t fancy hacking on it myself and I imagine you have better things to do too!
It also needs a long-term hosting, so that you can safely link to it, and not worry that the target URL will go away or get abandoned.
Another solution would be to support wikilinking in the markup language; that way if the wiki moves the links can move with it.
This is too hard to enforce outside the wiki, where anyone can fix failures to conform.
The greater convenience of the wiki markup might be enough, though?