Spreading rationality implies helping as many new people as possible develop improved rational thinking abilities but being a well-kept garden specifically demands censorship and/or bans of “fools” and people who are not “fun”.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” (Lincoln)
I think this fundamental conflict must be solved in some way. If not, then the risk is that LessWrong’s discussion area will produce neither of those outcomes. If it fills with irrational people, the rational ones will go elsewhere and the irrational people won’t spread rationality to themselves. They will instead most likely adopt some superficial version of it reminiscent of Feynman’s descriptions of cargo cult science or Eliezer’s descriptions of undiscriminating skeptics.
Perhaps there’s some article from Eliezer I’m unaware of that says something to the effect of “The discussion is supposed to be where the rational people produce rational thought and everyone else can lurk and that’s how rationality can be spread.” If so, I hope that this is pointed out to me.
Without some clear explanation of how LessWrong is supposed to both spread rationality and be a well-kept garden, we’re likely to respond to these directives inadequately.
Every school has this problem: how to welcome people who as yet know little and raise them up to the standard we want them to reach, while allowing those already there to develop further. Universities solve this with a caste distinction between the former (students) and the latter (faculty), plus a few bridging roles (grad student, intern, etc.). On a much smaller scale, the taiko group I play with has found the same problem of dividing beginners from the performing team. It doesn’t work to have one class that combines introductory practice with performance rehearsal. And there can be social problems of people who simply aren’t going to improve getting disgruntled at never being invited to join the performing team.
In another comment I suggested that this division already exists: LessWrong and CFAR. So the question is, does LessWrong itself need a further splitting between welcoming beginners and a “serious” inner circle? Who would be the advanced people who would tend the beginners garden? How would membership in the inner circle be decided?
Missions, perhaps? A few ideas: “We are rationalists, ask us anything” as an occasional post on reddit. Drop links and insightful comments around the internet where interesting people hang out.
Effect #1 is to raise the profile of rationality in the internet community in general, so that more people become interested. Effect #2 is that smart people click on our links and come to LW. I myself was linked to LW at first by a random link dropped in r/transhumanism or something. I immediately recognized the awesomeness of LW, and ate the sequences.
On the home front, I think we should go whole hog on being a well kept garden. Here’s why:
There’s no such thing as a crowd of philosophers. A movement should stay small and high quality as long as possible. The only way to maintain quality is to select for quality.
There are a lot of people out there, such that we could select for any combination of traits we liked and be unlikely to run out of noobs. We will have a much easier time at integration and community maintenance if we focused on only attracting the right folks.
I don’t think we have to worry about creating rationalists from normals. There are enough smart proto-rationalists out there just itching to find something like LW, that all we have to do is find them, demonstrate our powers, and point them here. We should focus on collecting rationalists, not creating them. (Is there anyone for whom this wouldn’t have worked? Worse, is there any major subset of good possible LWers that this turns off?)
As for integrating new people, I think the right people will find a way and it’s ok if everyone else gets turned off. This might be pure wishful thinking. What are other people’s thoughts on this?
Overall, have the low level missionary work happen out there where it belongs. Not in these hallowed halls.
As for what to do with these hallowed halls, here’s my recommendations:
Elect or otherwise create an Official Community Organizer who’s job it is to integrate all the opinions and make the decisions about the direction of LW. I think they would also provide direct friendly encouragement to the meetup organizers, who are currently totally lacking in coordination and support.
Sort out this crazy discussion/main bullshit. The current setup has very few desirable properties. I don’t know what the solution should be, but we should at least be trying things. This of course requires someone to come up with ideas and code them. Would it be bad to try a different arrangement for a month?
Fix the front page. The valuable stuff there is approximately the banner, “featured posts”, and current activity links. Everything else is of dubious value. The LW front page should be slick. Right now it looks like it was designed by a committee, and probably turns off most of our potentials.
Properly organize and index the LW material. This is a pretty big project; LW has thousands of good posts. This project neatly fits in with and builds on the current work in the wiki. The goal is a single root page from which every major insight is linked in at least a passable reading order. Like a textbook TOC. This obviously would benefit from wiki-improvements in general, for which I recommend merging wiki and LW accounts, and making wiki activity more visible and encouraged, among other things.
Friendship threads where we pick a partner and get to know them. Would generally increase community-coherence and civility. After meeting a lot of the other posters at the CFAR minicamp, I get more friendly feels in the community.
Somehow come up with the funding and political will to do all this stuff.
Something about trolls and idiots. Is this even a problem once the above are solved?
As for you, Epiphany, I want to commend you for still being at the throat of this problem, and still generating ideas and analysis. I’m impressed and humbled. Keep up the good work.
It has occurred to me that LessWrong is divided against itself with two conflicting directives:
Spread rationality.
Be a well-kept garden.
Spreading rationality implies helping as many new people as possible develop improved rational thinking abilities but being a well-kept garden specifically demands censorship and/or bans of “fools” and people who are not “fun”.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” (Lincoln)
I think this fundamental conflict must be solved in some way. If not, then the risk is that LessWrong’s discussion area will produce neither of those outcomes. If it fills with irrational people, the rational ones will go elsewhere and the irrational people won’t spread rationality to themselves. They will instead most likely adopt some superficial version of it reminiscent of Feynman’s descriptions of cargo cult science or Eliezer’s descriptions of undiscriminating skeptics.
Perhaps there’s some article from Eliezer I’m unaware of that says something to the effect of “The discussion is supposed to be where the rational people produce rational thought and everyone else can lurk and that’s how rationality can be spread.” If so, I hope that this is pointed out to me.
Without some clear explanation of how LessWrong is supposed to both spread rationality and be a well-kept garden, we’re likely to respond to these directives inadequately.
Every school has this problem: how to welcome people who as yet know little and raise them up to the standard we want them to reach, while allowing those already there to develop further. Universities solve this with a caste distinction between the former (students) and the latter (faculty), plus a few bridging roles (grad student, intern, etc.). On a much smaller scale, the taiko group I play with has found the same problem of dividing beginners from the performing team. It doesn’t work to have one class that combines introductory practice with performance rehearsal. And there can be social problems of people who simply aren’t going to improve getting disgruntled at never being invited to join the performing team.
In another comment I suggested that this division already exists: LessWrong and CFAR. So the question is, does LessWrong itself need a further splitting between welcoming beginners and a “serious” inner circle? Who would be the advanced people who would tend the beginners garden? How would membership in the inner circle be decided?
Missions, perhaps? A few ideas: “We are rationalists, ask us anything” as an occasional post on reddit. Drop links and insightful comments around the internet where interesting people hang out.
Effect #1 is to raise the profile of rationality in the internet community in general, so that more people become interested. Effect #2 is that smart people click on our links and come to LW. I myself was linked to LW at first by a random link dropped in r/transhumanism or something. I immediately recognized the awesomeness of LW, and ate the sequences.
On the home front, I think we should go whole hog on being a well kept garden. Here’s why:
There’s no such thing as a crowd of philosophers. A movement should stay small and high quality as long as possible. The only way to maintain quality is to select for quality.
There are a lot of people out there, such that we could select for any combination of traits we liked and be unlikely to run out of noobs. We will have a much easier time at integration and community maintenance if we focused on only attracting the right folks.
I don’t think we have to worry about creating rationalists from normals. There are enough smart proto-rationalists out there just itching to find something like LW, that all we have to do is find them, demonstrate our powers, and point them here. We should focus on collecting rationalists, not creating them. (Is there anyone for whom this wouldn’t have worked? Worse, is there any major subset of good possible LWers that this turns off?)
As for integrating new people, I think the right people will find a way and it’s ok if everyone else gets turned off. This might be pure wishful thinking. What are other people’s thoughts on this?
Overall, have the low level missionary work happen out there where it belongs. Not in these hallowed halls.
As for what to do with these hallowed halls, here’s my recommendations:
Elect or otherwise create an Official Community Organizer who’s job it is to integrate all the opinions and make the decisions about the direction of LW. I think they would also provide direct friendly encouragement to the meetup organizers, who are currently totally lacking in coordination and support.
Sort out this crazy discussion/main bullshit. The current setup has very few desirable properties. I don’t know what the solution should be, but we should at least be trying things. This of course requires someone to come up with ideas and code them. Would it be bad to try a different arrangement for a month?
Fix the front page. The valuable stuff there is approximately the banner, “featured posts”, and current activity links. Everything else is of dubious value. The LW front page should be slick. Right now it looks like it was designed by a committee, and probably turns off most of our potentials.
Properly organize and index the LW material. This is a pretty big project; LW has thousands of good posts. This project neatly fits in with and builds on the current work in the wiki. The goal is a single root page from which every major insight is linked in at least a passable reading order. Like a textbook TOC. This obviously would benefit from wiki-improvements in general, for which I recommend merging wiki and LW accounts, and making wiki activity more visible and encouraged, among other things.
Friendship threads where we pick a partner and get to know them. Would generally increase community-coherence and civility. After meeting a lot of the other posters at the CFAR minicamp, I get more friendly feels in the community.
Somehow come up with the funding and political will to do all this stuff.
Something about trolls and idiots. Is this even a problem once the above are solved?
As for you, Epiphany, I want to commend you for still being at the throat of this problem, and still generating ideas and analysis. I’m impressed and humbled. Keep up the good work.