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Warrigal comments on Open Thread: February 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong
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Someone once told me that the reason they don't read Less Wrong is that the articles and the comments don't match. The articles have one tone, and then the comments on that article have a completely different tone; it's like the article comes from one site and the comments come from another.
I find that to be a really weird reason not to read Less Wrong, and I have no idea what that person is talking about. Do you?
Yes.
Back in Overcoming Bias days, I constantly had the impression that the posts were of much higher quality than the comments. The way it typically worked, or so it seemed to me, was that Hanson or Yudkowsky (or occasionally another author) would write a beautifully clear post making a really nice point, and then the comments would be full of snarky, clacky, confused objections that a minute of thought really ought to have dispelled. There were obviously some wonderful exceptions to this, of course, but, by and large, that's how I remember feeling.
Curiously, though, I don't have this feeling with Less Wrong to anything like the same extent. I don't know whether this is because of the karma system, or just the fact that this feels more like a community environment (as opposed to the "Robin and Eliezer Show", as someone once dubbed OB), or what, but I think it has to be counted as a success story.
Oh! Maybe they were looking at the posts that were transplanted from Overcoming Bias and thinking those were representative of Less Wrong as a whole.
I think that the situation about the imported OB posts & comments should be somehow made clear to new readers. Several things there (no embedded replies, little karma spent, plenty of inactive users, different discusion tone) could be a source of confusion.
I hate to sound complimentary, but... I get the impression that the comments on LW are substantially higher-quality than the comments on OB.
And that the comments on LW come from a smaller group of core readers as well, which is to some extent unfortunate.
I wonder if it's the karma system or the registration requirement that does it?
Less Wrong, especially commenting on it, is ridiculously intimidating to outsiders. I've thought about this problem, and we need some sort of training grounds. Less Less Wrong or something. It's in my queue of top level posts to write.
So the answer to your question is the karma system.
Reminds me of a Jerry Seinfeld routine, where he talks about people who want and need to exercise at the gym, but are intimidated by the fit people who are already there, so they need a "gym before the gym" or a "pre-gym" or something like that.
(This is not too far from the reason for the success of the franchise Curves.)
What's so intimidating? You don't need much to post here, just a basic grounding in probability theory, decision theory, metaethics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, computer science, cognitive bias, evolutionary psychology, the theory of natural selection, artificial intelligence, existential risk, and quantum mechanics - oh, and of course to read a sequence of >600 3000+ word articles. So long as you can do that and you're happy with your every word being subject to the anonymous judgment of a fiercely intelligent community, you're good.
Sounds like a pretty good filter for generating intelligent discussion to me. Why would we want to lower the bar?
Being able to comment smartly and in a style that gets you upvoted doesn't really need any grounding in any of those subjects. I just crossed 1500 karma and only have basic grounding in Computer Science, Mathematics, and Philosophy.
When I started out, I hadn't read more than EY's Bayes' for Dummies, The Simple Truth, and one post on Newcomb's.
In my opinion, the following things will help you more than a degree in any of the subjects you mentioned:
Another factor:
So far as I am aware, the chief reason non-spammers have been banned is for obnoxious evangelism for some unpopular idea. Many people have unpopular ideas but continue to be valued members (e.g. Mitchell_Porter).
Useful data point, thanks. Have you made any more progress with the sequences since you last updated your wiki user info page?
Yeah. I just updated it again. I didn't realize anyone was actually looking at it... :P
Recently I burned out on the sequences and am taking a break to gorge myself on other subjects. I tend to absorb large scale topics in rotation. It helps me stay focused over longer distances and has an added benefit of making me reread stuff that didn't stick the first time through. The weekly study group will also help data retention.
Other data points that may be relevant: I have participated in a lot of online discussions; I have moved cross country into a drastically different cultural zone; I married someone from a non-US culture; I have visited at least one distinct Central American culture. In addition, I grew up in a religious culture but personally learn more toward a scientific/realistic culture. All of these things help build awareness that what I say isn't what other people hear and vice versa.
As evidence of this, my conversations here have much better transmission success than my posts. Once I get to talk to someone and hear them respond I can start the translation predictors. I am still learning how to do this before I hear the responses.
Not "and". "Or". If you don't already have it, then reading the sequences will give you a basic grounding in probability theory, decision theory, metaethics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, computer science, cognitive bias, evolutionary psychology, the theory of natural selection, artificial intelligence, existential risk, and quantum mechanics.
I actually think this is a little absurd. There is no where near enough on these topics in the sequences to give someone the background they need to participate comfortably here. Nearly everyone here as a lot of additional background knowledge. The sequences might be a decent enough guide for an autodidact to go off and learn more about a topic but there is no where near enough for most people.
The sequences are really kind of confusing... I tried linking people to Eliezer's quantum physics sequence on Reddit and it got modded highly, but one guy posted saying that he got scared off as soon as he saw complex numbers. I think it'll help once a professional edits the sequences into Eliezer's rationality book.
http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/b1v1f/thought_waveparticle_duality_is_the_result_of_a/c0kjuno
Which people do we want? What do those people need?
However strongly you catapult a plane from the flight deck, at some point it has to fly by itself.
Without new blood communities stagnate. The risk of group think is higher and assumptions are more likely to go unchecked. An extremely homogeneous group such as this one likely has major blind spots which we can help remedy by adding members with different kinds of experiences. I would be shocked if a bunch of white male, likely autism spectrum, CS and hard science types didn't have blind spots. This can be corrected by informing our discussions with a more diverse set of experiences. Also, more diverse backgrounds means more domains we can comfortably apply rationality to.
I also think the world would be a better place if this rationality thing caught on. It is probably impossible (not to mention undesirable) to lower the entry barrier so that everyone can get in. But I think we could lower the barrier so that it is reasonable to think that 80-85+ percentile IQ, youngish, non-religious types could make sense of things. Rationality could benefit them and they being more rational could benefit the world.
Now we don't want to be swamped with newbies and just end up rehashing everything over and over. But we're hardly in any danger of that happening. I could be wrong but I suspect almost no top level posts have been created by anyone who didn't come over from OB. It isn't like we're turning people away at the door right now. And you can set it up so that the newbie questions are isolated from everything else. The trick is finding a way to do it that isn't totally patronizing (or targeting children so that we can get away with being patronizing).
What they need is trickier. Lets start here: A clear, concise one-stop-shop FAQ would be good. A place where asking the basic questions is acceptable and background isn't assumed. Explanations that don't rely on concepts from mathematics, CS or hard sciences.
Data point to the contrary here. On top of being a data point, I'm also a person, which is convenient: you can ask a person questions. ;)
I believe purely ballistic transportation systems have been proposed at various times, actually.
I've long said that Truly Part of You is the article with, by far, the highest ratio of "Less Wrong philosophy content" to length. (Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be listed in any sequence despite being a follow-up to two others.)
Other than knowing specific jargon, that would get people reasonably up to speed and should probably be what we're pointing newcomers to.
Maybe. Except someone who has never looked at program code is going to be really confused.
Well there were several subjects in that list I knew little about until I started reading the Sequences, so yes, on that point I confess I'm being hyperbolic for humorous effect...
I can actually attest to this feeling. My first reaction to reading Less Wrong was honestly "these people are way above my level of intelligence such that there's no possible way I could catch up" and I was actually abrasive to the idea of this site. I'm past that mentality, but a Less Less Wrong actually sounds like a good idea, even if it might end up being more like how high school math and science classes should be than how Less Wrong is currently. It's not so much lowering the bar as nudging people upwards slowly.
Being directed towards the sequences obviously would help. I've been bouncing through them, but after Eliezer's comment I'm going to try starting from the beginning. But I can see where people [such as myself] may need the extra help to make it all fall together.
I think better orientation of newcomers would be enough.
Another major problem (I believe) is that LW presents as a blog, which is to say, a source of "news", which is at odds with a mission of building a knowledge base on rationality.
If it's the top level post is going to be a while I'd like to hear more about what you have in mind.
I comment less now because the combined effect of your & RH's posts made me more eager to listen and less eager to opine. The more I understand the less I think I have much to add.
Threading helps a lot too.
OB has threading (although it doesn't seem as good/ as used as on LW).
That may be a recent innovation; it wasn't threaded in the days when Eliezer's articles appeared there.
I think it happened immediately after LW went live. Robin revised a bunch of things at that time.
Yup; I asked Robin why he was willing to make all those changes and upgrades during the LW/OB split, when his rationale for splitting was that he didn't trust the LW/Reddit codebase. I don't remember what his answer was.
Maybe the community has just gotten smarter.
I know I now disagree with someone of the statements/challenges I've posted on OB.
It shouldn't be too shocking that high quality posts were actually educational.
must... resist... upvoting
I had that impression mostly when I went back and read some old OB comments - for example, a lot of comments on Archimedes's Chronophone seem to just miss the point of the article.
I would expect the same post would get higher-quality proposals today - but then, maybe it's because the set of LW comments I read is biased towards those with high karma. Or maybe it's because the threading system makes it easier to read a set of related comments without getting confused.
That reason sounds incomplete, but I think I know what the person is talking about.
The best example I can think of is Normal Cryonics. The post was partly a personal celebration of a positive experience and partly about the lousiness of parents that don't sign their kids up for cryonics. Yet, the comments mostly ignored this and it became a discussion about the facts of the post -- can you really get cryonics for $300 a year? Why should a person sign up or not sign up?
The post itself was voted up to 33, but only 3 to 5 comments out of 868 disparaged parents in agreement. There's definitely a disconnect.
Also, on mediocre posts and/or posts that people haven't related to, people will talk about the post for a few comments and then it will be an open discussion as though the post just provided a keyword. But I don't see much problem with this. The post provided a topic, that's all.
I don't see a terrible problem with comments being "a discussion about the facts of the post"; that's the point of comments, isn't it?
Perhaps we just need an Open Threads category. We can have an open thread on cryonics, quantum mechanics and many worlds, Bayesian probability, etc.
Every article on cryonics becomes a general cryonics discussion forum. My recent sequence of posts on the subject on my blog carry explicit injunctions to discuss what the post actually says, but it seems to make no difference; people share whatever anti-cryonics argument they can think of without doing any reading or thinking no matter how unrelated to the subject of the post.
Same with this article becoming a talking shop about AGW.
I should have followed my initial instinct when I saw that, of immediately posting a new top level article with body text that read exactly "Talk about AGW here".