Part of the impetus of our current thought process is there does seem to be a limit on the complexity of stuff that typically gets answered without bounties attached (but, we now have a track record of occasional bounty posts successfully motivating such work).
I could imagine it turning out that the correct balance involves “not building any additional site features, just allow it to be something that happens organically sometimes”, so that it can happen but there’s friction that prevents runaway Moloch processes.
I currently think there’s room to slightly increase the option of monetary incentives without destroying everything but it’s definitely something I’d want to think carefully about.
My answer (not necessarily endorsed by rest of team) to your question is something like “right now, it seems like for the most part, LessWrong motivates stuff that is either Insight Porn, or ‘Insight That Is At Least Reasonably Competitive with Insight Porn.’”
And we actually have the collective orientation and many of the skills needed to work on real, important problems collaboratively. Much of those problems won’t have the intrinsic feedback loops that make it natural to solve them – they’re neither as fun to work on nor to read.
We see hints of people doing this anyway, but despite the fact that I think, say, a Scott Alexander More Than You Wanted To Know post is 10x as valuable as the average high-karma LW post, it isn’t 10x as rewarded. (And I’d be much less willing to read if it Scott wasn’t as funny, and it’s sad if people have to gain the skill ‘be funny’ in order to work on stuff like that)
Meanwhile, there’s a bunch of ways Academia seems to systematically suck. I asked a friend who’s a bio grad student if Academia could use better communication infrastructure. And they said (paraphrased) “hah. Academia isn’t about communication and working together to solve problems. Academics wouldn’t want to share their early work, they’d be afraid of getting scooped.”
I’m not sure if their experience is representatives but it seemed at least pretty common.
Meanwhile, LessWrong has an actual existing culture that is pretty well suited to this. I think a project that attempted to move this elsewhere would not be nearly as successful. Even a “serious intellectual progress” solution network is still a social network, and still requires the chicken/egg problem of getting people to collectively believe in it.
I’m much more excited about such a project bootstrapping off LW than trying to start from scratch.
(but, we now have a track record of occasional bounty posts successfully motivating such work).
Can you elaborate on this? I haven’t seen any bounty-driven work adjacent to LW, and I’d like to look at a few successes to help me understand whether adding some of those mechanisms to LW is useful, comparing to adding some LW interactions (ads or links) to those places where bounties are already successful.
I’m much more excited about such a project bootstrapping off LW than trying to start from scratch.
I totally get that, but those aren’t the only two options, and that excitement doesn’t make it the right choice.
Examples of bounties were included in the rewrite (they have already become moderately common on LW, and most of the time seem to produce more/better discussion). See the middle section for a few links.
I meant ‘excited’ in the sense that I expect it to work and generate a lot of value.
Part of the impetus of our current thought process is there does seem to be a limit on the complexity of stuff that typically gets answered without bounties attached (but, we now have a track record of occasional bounty posts successfully motivating such work).
I could imagine it turning out that the correct balance involves “not building any additional site features, just allow it to be something that happens organically sometimes”, so that it can happen but there’s friction that prevents runaway Moloch processes.
I currently think there’s room to slightly increase the option of monetary incentives without destroying everything but it’s definitely something I’d want to think carefully about.
My answer (not necessarily endorsed by rest of team) to your question is something like “right now, it seems like for the most part, LessWrong motivates stuff that is either Insight Porn, or ‘Insight That Is At Least Reasonably Competitive with Insight Porn.’”
And we actually have the collective orientation and many of the skills needed to work on real, important problems collaboratively. Much of those problems won’t have the intrinsic feedback loops that make it natural to solve them – they’re neither as fun to work on nor to read.
We see hints of people doing this anyway, but despite the fact that I think, say, a Scott Alexander More Than You Wanted To Know post is 10x as valuable as the average high-karma LW post, it isn’t 10x as rewarded. (And I’d be much less willing to read if it Scott wasn’t as funny, and it’s sad if people have to gain the skill ‘be funny’ in order to work on stuff like that)
Meanwhile, there’s a bunch of ways Academia seems to systematically suck. I asked a friend who’s a bio grad student if Academia could use better communication infrastructure. And they said (paraphrased) “hah. Academia isn’t about communication and working together to solve problems. Academics wouldn’t want to share their early work, they’d be afraid of getting scooped.”
I’m not sure if their experience is representatives but it seemed at least pretty common.
Meanwhile, LessWrong has an actual existing culture that is pretty well suited to this. I think a project that attempted to move this elsewhere would not be nearly as successful. Even a “serious intellectual progress” solution network is still a social network, and still requires the chicken/egg problem of getting people to collectively believe in it.
I’m much more excited about such a project bootstrapping off LW than trying to start from scratch.
Can you elaborate on this? I haven’t seen any bounty-driven work adjacent to LW, and I’d like to look at a few successes to help me understand whether adding some of those mechanisms to LW is useful, comparing to adding some LW interactions (ads or links) to those places where bounties are already successful.
I totally get that, but those aren’t the only two options, and that excitement doesn’t make it the right choice.
Examples of bounties were included in the rewrite (they have already become moderately common on LW, and most of the time seem to produce more/better discussion). See the middle section for a few links.
I meant ‘excited’ in the sense that I expect it to work and generate a lot of value.