JoshuaZ comments on Rationality quotes: June 2010 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Morendil 01 June 2010 06:07PM

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Comment author: JoshuaZ 03 June 2010 04:31:33PM 1 point [-]

How would you measure the rate of rationally-insightful contributions? I'm also not sure which wikis would be useful to test this on. Some wikis (such as say the various Wikipedias) have prohibitions on original research. Other wikis have narrow goals that will mimimze the number of rational insights. Thus, I'd expect a very low insight rate on say Wikispecies since that is devoted to cataloging existing biological knowledge.

Comment author: RobinZ 03 June 2010 04:43:24PM 3 points [-]

Good points. What I was attempting to measure was the relative measure* of rationalists on TV Tropes versus other nerd communities. The part of my thesis being tested is that no notable difference need be hypothesized to explain EY's perception of unusual rationality in the wiki.

(Was I mistaken to believe that EY thought TV Tropes was unusually rational compared to other nerdy Internet communities, as opposed to compared to other Internet communities, full stop? I agree that TV Tropes is nerdier than most of the Internet.)

* i.e. fraction of population weighted by intensity of participation.