More than a month too late, but I’m fifteen, and also a girl. Got here from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which I found out about from TV Tropes. You really should milk that, you know. :)
A question that might trigger some ideas: When you first started looking around this site, what did you see that you found appealing, and what did you see that made you not want to stick around?
OnTheOtherHandle replied to this (below). Unfortunately, she is still not sure how the site’s various buttons work, so it got sent to me as a PM. I’m pretty sure she wanted it shared, so I am doing so. If you want to upvote her ideas, I suppose you will have to upvote the grandparent. Here is what she wrote:
Hi, um, I got your message from the envelope-shaped button on the sidebar. I don’t even know if it was private or on the comments, but I can’t seem to access that page to write a reply there, so I’ll just send you this. Sorry if this isn’t the right way to do things, it takes me a while to navigate a new site.
As for ideas, well, those are difficult, so I’ll start with what attracted me to LW. As I said, it was Methods of Rationality that brought me here, and what I liked about that was it was very scientific and logical without being The Spock—without shunning emotions as wrong or illogical, something I never really got. It made me laugh out loud many times and even cry once or twice.
Because of this, it worked as a story first and foremost. If a piece of fiction is overtly trying to promote a philosophy, then it earns HUGE bonus points for actually being a good story in its own right. I’d say it served as a nice, fun way to “ease into” the rationalist community. Plus, it really made me feel for the transhumanist cause, and made me think hard about the idea that death was inevitable or acceptable, even though I can’t say with certainty yet that I’m a transhumanist.
As for what made me stay, well, this is fascinating stuff. I love science and psychology. I was already an atheist and a huge nerd and had already read some Dawkins and Feynman before seeing this site, so I guess that helped me to not become so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of material here. I think a little background is important, because even though LW is pretty accessable, I can’t say it’s for beginners. (But of course, since I’ve been randomly article-hopping, it’s likely that I missed the material intended for newcomers.)
Another reason I want to stay is because LW hasn’t been purged of the emotionality of Methods of Rationality. I see here a community of people that cares deeply about their cause, and that helps a lot.
But this might be a deterrent for a lot of people actually. The debates get heated here, and you can feel tempers running high. I got the feeling, initially, that I would read an article, and then in the comments read a huge list of reasons why it was totally wrong, almost as long as the original piece itself. I don’t mind too much, but I think I have a higher tolerance for argument than most people (most teenagers and most female teenagers especially). I can see how someone could look at this and think “YouTube flame wars but wordier”, conclude you’re “immature”, and leave. Unfortunately, I can’t really think of a solution, except maybe hiding the comments unless someone clicks a specific button to read them.
This is a reply the comment that got accidentally sent to Perplexed.
I got the feeling, initially, that I would read an article, and then in the comments read a huge list of reasons why it was totally wrong
I, too, got that feeling when I first browsed here. My solution to it was to look at the karma of comments: if the edit: comment got up above 5 karma, it probably is a reason why the post is wrong. If the edit: comment was at neutral or negative karma, it probably isn’t a reason why the post is wrong. I don’t have much data on how effective this method is, but it seemed to work for me. That’s not a general solution, though.
The general cure to looking immature might be to further promote a community norm of resolving disagreements. I see many arguments ending with one person admitting/realising they were mistaken (this is something that I had never seen anywhere else on the internet), but I see more disagreements left hanging. I think if we saw lots of disagreements with the posts, and most of them were resolved by reading through the comment tree, new people would see disagreements being resolved on the internet and be very impressed!
I, too, got that feeling when I first browsed here. My solution to it was to look at the karma of comments: if a [comment] got up above 5 karma, it probably is a reason why the post is wrong. If the [comment] was at neutral or negative karma, it probably isn’t a reason why the post is wrong. I don’t have much data on how effective this method is, but it seemed to work for me. That’s not a general solution, though.
Are those comment/post substitutions what you intended to say? I was initially confused but that correction made sense of it. That policy seems to be a reasonable one. I use approximately the same interpretation except on topics that get political. “Correctness” becomes much less correlated to karma in such cases.
I see many arguments ending with one person admitting/realising they were mistaken (this is something that I had never seen anywhere else on the internet), but I see more disagreements left hanging.
Resolving disagreements on the internet is impressive, isn’t it? People just stopped being wrong on the internet! WTF? At the same time there is a place for leaving things hanging. Sometimes leaving aside disagreements without making a fuss or engaging in status battles can be good enough. Particularly in those (frequent) cases where the issue isn’t cut and dry. When there is merit in both points but this can’t be simply acknowledged without reconstructing and translating from not-quite-compatible models of reality.
I bother to mention this because I’ve noticed that sometimes trying to resolve differences can at times do more harm than good, despite the best of intentions. Some people actually get offended if you try to be conciliatory, bizarre as it may seem.
Yeah, thanks for correcting. And I definitely agree, disagreements are not universally solved by one party admitting fault—but I do feel that there are a large number of cases on LessWrong where I don’t know if one side made a mistake, or if the case doesn’t have a right answer, or whatnot. And I would like to see more of those cases, the ones floating in between, to be resolved in either one direction or the other.
Part of the problem is that any attempt at direct enforcement or pressure could deter people from commenting in the first place, knowing that if they did they’d be expected to see any disagreements through to the end. (That’s been mentioned in previous threads, I think.)
Random thought: Would individuals trying to shift the norm by setting an example work any better? Like, one person going through their comment history (possibly using the link here), and making a list in their profile page of unresolved disagreements and their current status (possibly including otherwise unvoiced ones), plus a list of resolved disagreements and how they were resolved, or a list of posts and comments that led them to shift their beliefs (incrementally or otherwise) on something?
Not volunteering either way, though. In the past I’ve occasionally killed time reading my old posts on forums, and on reading regrettable things I’ve tried to fix them by amending them in replies or putting notes about them my profile, but that doesn’t seem like the same thing.
Basically, it seems you(general) would need to make a deliberate effort to continue discussions even after it becomes pure work, because you value having a site where disagreements are resolved more than you value anything else you might be doing with that time.
Edit: I idealistically hope that when agreement is impractical, people who try long enough can still reach a better level of understanding than the standard “agreement to disagree” cliché.
(responding to perplexed’s copy)
When I came here from MOR, I just started by reading the sequences one by one, and then started going through new posts whenever they came up, and it seemed to work fairly well. There have been a couple of posts on the site which I did not completely agree with, but I still learned something from all of them, and it helped me get into the habit of updating my beliefs more easily.
Also, I am glad that there are other people my age out there who are interested by sites like this :p
More than a month too late, but I’m fifteen, and also a girl. Got here from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which I found out about from TV Tropes. You really should milk that, you know. :)
Any suggestions how?
A question that might trigger some ideas: When you first started looking around this site, what did you see that you found appealing, and what did you see that made you not want to stick around?
Oh, and btw, Welcome to LessWrong.
OnTheOtherHandle replied to this (below). Unfortunately, she is still not sure how the site’s various buttons work, so it got sent to me as a PM. I’m pretty sure she wanted it shared, so I am doing so. If you want to upvote her ideas, I suppose you will have to upvote the grandparent. Here is what she wrote:
Hi, um, I got your message from the envelope-shaped button on the sidebar. I don’t even know if it was private or on the comments, but I can’t seem to access that page to write a reply there, so I’ll just send you this. Sorry if this isn’t the right way to do things, it takes me a while to navigate a new site.
As for ideas, well, those are difficult, so I’ll start with what attracted me to LW. As I said, it was Methods of Rationality that brought me here, and what I liked about that was it was very scientific and logical without being The Spock—without shunning emotions as wrong or illogical, something I never really got. It made me laugh out loud many times and even cry once or twice.
Because of this, it worked as a story first and foremost. If a piece of fiction is overtly trying to promote a philosophy, then it earns HUGE bonus points for actually being a good story in its own right. I’d say it served as a nice, fun way to “ease into” the rationalist community. Plus, it really made me feel for the transhumanist cause, and made me think hard about the idea that death was inevitable or acceptable, even though I can’t say with certainty yet that I’m a transhumanist.
As for what made me stay, well, this is fascinating stuff. I love science and psychology. I was already an atheist and a huge nerd and had already read some Dawkins and Feynman before seeing this site, so I guess that helped me to not become so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of material here. I think a little background is important, because even though LW is pretty accessable, I can’t say it’s for beginners. (But of course, since I’ve been randomly article-hopping, it’s likely that I missed the material intended for newcomers.)
Another reason I want to stay is because LW hasn’t been purged of the emotionality of Methods of Rationality. I see here a community of people that cares deeply about their cause, and that helps a lot.
But this might be a deterrent for a lot of people actually. The debates get heated here, and you can feel tempers running high. I got the feeling, initially, that I would read an article, and then in the comments read a huge list of reasons why it was totally wrong, almost as long as the original piece itself. I don’t mind too much, but I think I have a higher tolerance for argument than most people (most teenagers and most female teenagers especially). I can see how someone could look at this and think “YouTube flame wars but wordier”, conclude you’re “immature”, and leave. Unfortunately, I can’t really think of a solution, except maybe hiding the comments unless someone clicks a specific button to read them.
Hope this helped. :)
This is a reply the comment that got accidentally sent to Perplexed.
I, too, got that feeling when I first browsed here. My solution to it was to look at the karma of comments: if the edit: comment got up above 5 karma, it probably is a reason why the post is wrong. If the edit: comment was at neutral or negative karma, it probably isn’t a reason why the post is wrong. I don’t have much data on how effective this method is, but it seemed to work for me. That’s not a general solution, though.
The general cure to looking immature might be to further promote a community norm of resolving disagreements. I see many arguments ending with one person admitting/realising they were mistaken (this is something that I had never seen anywhere else on the internet), but I see more disagreements left hanging. I think if we saw lots of disagreements with the posts, and most of them were resolved by reading through the comment tree, new people would see disagreements being resolved on the internet and be very impressed!
Are those comment/post substitutions what you intended to say? I was initially confused but that correction made sense of it. That policy seems to be a reasonable one. I use approximately the same interpretation except on topics that get political. “Correctness” becomes much less correlated to karma in such cases.
Resolving disagreements on the internet is impressive, isn’t it? People just stopped being wrong on the internet! WTF? At the same time there is a place for leaving things hanging. Sometimes leaving aside disagreements without making a fuss or engaging in status battles can be good enough. Particularly in those (frequent) cases where the issue isn’t cut and dry. When there is merit in both points but this can’t be simply acknowledged without reconstructing and translating from not-quite-compatible models of reality.
I bother to mention this because I’ve noticed that sometimes trying to resolve differences can at times do more harm than good, despite the best of intentions. Some people actually get offended if you try to be conciliatory, bizarre as it may seem.
Yeah, thanks for correcting. And I definitely agree, disagreements are not universally solved by one party admitting fault—but I do feel that there are a large number of cases on LessWrong where I don’t know if one side made a mistake, or if the case doesn’t have a right answer, or whatnot. And I would like to see more of those cases, the ones floating in between, to be resolved in either one direction or the other.
Part of the problem is that any attempt at direct enforcement or pressure could deter people from commenting in the first place, knowing that if they did they’d be expected to see any disagreements through to the end. (That’s been mentioned in previous threads, I think.)
Random thought: Would individuals trying to shift the norm by setting an example work any better? Like, one person going through their comment history (possibly using the link here), and making a list in their profile page of unresolved disagreements and their current status (possibly including otherwise unvoiced ones), plus a list of resolved disagreements and how they were resolved, or a list of posts and comments that led them to shift their beliefs (incrementally or otherwise) on something?
Not volunteering either way, though. In the past I’ve occasionally killed time reading my old posts on forums, and on reading regrettable things I’ve tried to fix them by amending them in replies or putting notes about them my profile, but that doesn’t seem like the same thing.
Basically, it seems you(general) would need to make a deliberate effort to continue discussions even after it becomes pure work, because you value having a site where disagreements are resolved more than you value anything else you might be doing with that time.
Edit: I idealistically hope that when agreement is impractical, people who try long enough can still reach a better level of understanding than the standard “agreement to disagree” cliché.
I know what you mean. There isn’t always time to go and do the research oneself on each topic so as to judge between the positions.
(responding to perplexed’s copy) When I came here from MOR, I just started by reading the sequences one by one, and then started going through new posts whenever they came up, and it seemed to work fairly well. There have been a couple of posts on the site which I did not completely agree with, but I still learned something from all of them, and it helped me get into the habit of updating my beliefs more easily. Also, I am glad that there are other people my age out there who are interested by sites like this :p
Welcome aboard!