Please consider addressing your comments to individuals rather than presuming the existence of a group consensus.
“LW” is composed of lots of different people — whose views on the subject range from considered feminism to considered anti-feminism; whose politics range from left to right and monarchist to republican to anarchist; whose levels of education range from “smart high-schooler” to “published researcher”; whose reasons for being here range from thinking it helps save the world, to shootin’ the shit.
This is arguably “excusable” and attributable to the inherent difficulty of thinking at multiple levels of abstraction simultaneously—like thinking of the quarks, the molecules, the aerodynamics/thermodynamics and the newtonian motions of a paper airplane all at the same time without loss of coherence or losing any data.
It is easier to compute a social trend first, reason its causes, and then separately compute individual trends, reason their causes, and then link everything together.
Well, maybe. But a stream of comments also lacks many of the cues that in-person has to distinguish individuals.
For instance — with the exception of those LW-folks whom I’ve met in person — when I read LW comments I don’t imagine them being in distinct voices for each poster. Some online forums make individual personality more visible, for instance by having icons or colors associated with each individual. LW doesn’t. And I don’t suggest that we should. But to a newcomer, the absence of cues other than ① username, and ② writing style might contribute to a sense of greater consonance, harmony, or even uniformity. Add the usual outgroup homogeneity bias, and LW could look like a hivemind.
If this really bothers you, mentally substitute all instances of “LW” in my comments with “all the humans that have replied to my comments in this thread on this website.”
That was a beautifully structured bit of propaganda in your last sentence, though. “LW is composed of lots of different people”—that’s an applause light worthy of a keynote speech at a transhumanist conference.
Please consider addressing your comments to individuals rather than presuming the existence of a group consensus.
“LW” is composed of lots of different people — whose views on the subject range from considered feminism to considered anti-feminism; whose politics range from left to right and monarchist to republican to anarchist; whose levels of education range from “smart high-schooler” to “published researcher”; whose reasons for being here range from thinking it helps save the world, to shootin’ the shit.
That conflicts with eridu’s political philosophy. They are simply not a methodological individualist.
This is arguably “excusable” and attributable to the inherent difficulty of thinking at multiple levels of abstraction simultaneously—like thinking of the quarks, the molecules, the aerodynamics/thermodynamics and the newtonian motions of a paper airplane all at the same time without loss of coherence or losing any data.
It is easier to compute a social trend first, reason its causes, and then separately compute individual trends, reason their causes, and then link everything together.
Well, maybe. But a stream of comments also lacks many of the cues that in-person has to distinguish individuals.
For instance — with the exception of those LW-folks whom I’ve met in person — when I read LW comments I don’t imagine them being in distinct voices for each poster. Some online forums make individual personality more visible, for instance by having icons or colors associated with each individual. LW doesn’t. And I don’t suggest that we should. But to a newcomer, the absence of cues other than ① username, and ② writing style might contribute to a sense of greater consonance, harmony, or even uniformity. Add the usual outgroup homogeneity bias, and LW could look like a hivemind.
You’re being needlessly pedantic.
If this really bothers you, mentally substitute all instances of “LW” in my comments with “all the humans that have replied to my comments in this thread on this website.”
That was a beautifully structured bit of propaganda in your last sentence, though. “LW is composed of lots of different people”—that’s an applause light worthy of a keynote speech at a transhumanist conference.
Yep … troll. Bye!