For the record, the “:D” at the end of my comment only meant that I don’t think that literally everyone will do this tomorrow. But yes, the temptation to slightly move in given direction is real—I can feel it myself (unfortunately I have no Patreon account and no product to sell), though I will probably forget this tomorrow—and some people will follow the nudge more than the others. Also, new people may be tempted to join for the wrong reasons.
On the other hand, even before saying it explicitly, this hypothesis was… not too surprising, in my opinion. I mean, we already knew that some rich people are supporting LW financially; it would make sense if they also read it occasionally. Also, we already had lots of people trying to join LW for the wrong reasons; most of them fail. So I think that the harm of saying this explicitly is small.
For the record, the “:D” at the end of my comment only meant that I don’t think that literally everyone will do this tomorrow. But yes, the temptation to slightly move in given direction is real—I can feel it myself (unfortunately I have no Patreon account and no product to sell), though I will probably forget this tomorrow—and some people will follow the nudge more than the others. Also, new people may be tempted to join for the wrong reasons.
On the other hand, even before saying it explicitly, this hypothesis was… not too surprising, in my opinion. I mean, we already knew that some rich people are supporting LW financially; it would make sense if they also read it occasionally. Also, we already had lots of people trying to join LW for the wrong reasons; most of them fail. So I think that the harm of saying this explicitly is small.