Will_Newsome 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: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 February 2010 11:24:38PM *  29 points [-]

Voted up, but calling them "nerds" in reply is equally ad-hominem, ya know. Let's just say that they don't seem to have the very high skill level required to distinguish good unusual beliefs from bad unusual beliefs, yet. (Nor even the realization that this is a hard problem, yet.)

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.

Also, one person on RationalWiki saying silly things is not a good reason to launch an aggressive counterattack on a whole wiki containing many potential recruits.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 18 May 2011 11:15:51AM 7 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.

(As an extreme example, a few weeks idly checking out RationalWiki led me to the quote at the top of this page and only a few months after that I was at SIAI.)

Comment author: David_Gerard 12 May 2012 09:11:16PM 1 point [-]

I only just noticed this. Good Lord. (I put that quote there, so you're my fault.)