I think this is great, I've wanted an off-topic subreddit for a while. If we can get people to use it, great, but I suspect that there is going to be resistance in getting people to effectively use something that isn't on Less Wrong. It also means that comments won't show up in Recent Comments and other issues of integration. Hopefully this works for the next month until we can get a local off-topic subreddit going.

Yet another user here who'd like to see, e.g., "2 upvotes, 2 downvotes," rather than the way it is now, namely,"0 points," at the top of the comment.

How do you decide which to use? Is there something in particular that the open threads would be for?

and the evolved tribal instincts in me say that this is a power grab outside the bounds of your status.

Do you even know what my status is? It's not all that high, but it's more likely than not that you don't know, and you shouldn't presume that people other than you have low status.

This remark was mainly in response to this bit:

I retain moderator power over the sub-Reddit, and can delete things and ban people from it. If this gets to be too much work for me, I will be happy to give mod power to other interested Less Wrong readers with a track record of good posts and comments.

By lampshading the fact that you were gaining moderator power, you made it look like a power grab, even if it wasn't meant to be.

(Was this bit edited? I think I might've read a pre-edit version, but have no way to check.)

"Hypocrisy and dissimulation are what keeps social systems strong; it is intellectual honesty that destroys them."

Theodore Dalrymple- The New Vichy Syndrome p. 26.

"No it isn't. They use the same code base. Any security hole in either one is very likely to be present in both."

You mean, they both share the same Reddit codebase? That's largely true, but it doesn't make it any less safe. What PhilGoetz means is that if one site goes down or crashes or gets taken over by Martians or whatever, the other will still be fine. So, in that sense, it's not single-point-of-failure.

On consideration, I agree about the subreddit. The separate login is inconvenient, unfortunately.

I, too, would like a +/- display - wasn't someone working on some code to push soon?

Think of it as an emergency backup, for when the UFAI takes down LessWrong. reddit may give us seconds more to organize our resistance.

The code is independent; it's not single-point-of-failure.

No it isn't. They use the same code base. Any security hole in either one is very likely to be present in both. (Of course, more mundane IT problems are very unlikely to affect both sites simultaneously. But it's not useful against UFAIs.)

The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.

--Robert A. Heinlein

Sad, but true.

"This won't be available on the Subreddit, nor will any other improvements I or anyone else may make to the Less Wrong codebase in the future, unless we get those features rolled out for all of Reddit, which is unlikely."

That's great- don't get me wrong!- but this just means that, if you want to conduct a poll, you should do it on LW instead of the sub-reddit. The two are not intended to be mutually exclusive; you're supposed to use both.

Ooh, good catch! wheninrome15 may need to define "will not blow up in our faces" in more detail as well.

Think of it as an emergency backup, for when the UFAI takes down LessWrong. reddit may give us seconds more to organize our resistance.

The code is independent; it's not single-point-of-failure.

There is a major problem with this. I wrote code to enable polls in comments, which is currently in testing and likely to be rolled out soon. This won't be available on the Subreddit, nor will any other improvements I or anyone else may make to the Less Wrong codebase in the future, unless we get those features rolled out for all of Reddit, which is unlikely. I am opposed.

I appreciate Tom's initiative. I'd be in favor of the idea if we had a link to the reddit page from lesswrong.com, preferably above or below the "Recent Posts" list in the right-hand frame; and a link from reddit back to lesswrong.com.

Also, I'm curious to see what the "most controversial / hottest / etc" tabs will reveal.

BTW, I'd like to see a +/- point display on comments, instead of the sum of the two.

Is there any chance that we (a) CAN'T restrict AI to be friendly per se, but (b) (conditional on this impossibility) CAN restrict it to keep it from blowing up in our faces?

First, define "friendly" in enough detail that I know that it's different from "will not blow up in our faces".

It's hidden in "Older Work" - you have to click on "Major Published Papers" to see it.

But agreed on all other points.

"Personally, I wish the LW software supported subreddits."

If you want to implement this, please do go ahead, I and many others would greatly appreciate it. But as it stands now, this isn't here, and probably won't get implemented for months (if it does so at all).

I agree. I worry that anthropomorphising these conflicting thoughts just strengthens the divide.

I like your comment "All this has very little to do with actual agency or the workings of akrasia, though, and tends to interfere with the process of a person owning up to the goals that they want to dissociate from. By pretending it's another agency that wants to surf the net, you get to maintain moral superiority... and still hang onto your problem. The goal of virtually any therapy that involves multiple agencies, is to integrate them, but the typical person on getting hold of the metaphor uses is to maintain the separation."

It doesn't have to be mutually exclusive. The problem is that the open threads are over-crowded, so having another place to discuss off-topic things should help make it easier to use them too.

Vote this comment up if you're opposed to moving discussions from open threads to the sub-Reddit.

Karma balance is here