Morendil comments on Open Thread: February 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong

10 Post author: CronoDAS 16 February 2010 08:29AM

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Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2010 03:25:52AM 16 points [-]

Yes, they're pretty softcore by LessWrongian standards but places like this are where advanced rationalists are recruited from, so if someone is making a sincere effort in the direction of Traditional Rationality, it's worthwhile trying to avoid offending them when they make probability-theoretic errors. Even if they mock you first.

I guess I should try harder to remember this, in the context of my rather discouraging recent foray into the Richard Dawkins Forums -- which, I admit, had me thinking twice about whether affiliation with "rational" causes was at all a useful indicator of actual receptivity to argument, and wondering whether there was much more point in visiting a place like that than a generic Internet forum. (My actual interlocutors were in fact probably hopeless, but maybe I could have done a favor to a few lurkers by not giving up so quickly.)

But, you know, it really is frustrating how little of the quality of a person (like Richard Dawkins, or, say, Paul Graham) or a cause (like increasing rationality, or improving science education) actually manages to rub off or trickle down onto the legions of Internet followers of said person or cause.

Comment author: Morendil 20 February 2010 09:31:15AM 5 points [-]

it really is frustrating how little of the quality of a person [...] actually manages to rub off

Wait, you have a model which says it should?

You don't learn from a person merely by associating with them. And:

onto the legions of Internet followers of said person or cause.

I would bet a fair bit that this is the source of your frustration, right there: scale. You can learn from a person by directly interacting with them, and sometimes by interacting with people who learned from them. Beyond that, it seems to me that you get "dilution effects", kicking in as soon as you grow faster than some critical pace at which newcomers have enough time to acculturate and turn into teachers.

Communities of inquiry tend to be victims of their own success. The smarter communities recognize this, anticipate the consequences, and adjust their design around them.