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DSimon comments on Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti-Instrumental Rationality - Less Wrong
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Why I read less wrong:
Item D is the most important to me, but LessWrong has not been very successful at it. EY rarely gives the posts that I think are important along those lines the coveted green button, nor does the LW readership vote them up highly.
I think that the most important purpose LW could serve would be to critically analyze the ideas EY has put forth, and discuss different possible paths to a better future. But, AFAIK, EY has not given the green button to any posts that look at his ideas critically. Most readers never see posts that don't get the green button. So LW doesn't serve that purpose well.
Self-improvement for me from LW does not usually come from the akrasia stuff. pjeby's website is more interesting for that, at least what I've looked at so far. (I read "Everything I Needed To Know About Life, I Learned From Supervillains" yesterday, and recommend it.) It comes more in finding specific errors in my reasoning or holes in my understanding, and calibrating.
EY's sequences and early posts are very different from the usual self-improvement stuff. I think people would benefit more from reading the sequences than from staying current on all the new posts (yet I do the latter instead of the former). I know people aren't reading them, because he has some good posts (old ones, backdated to before LW existed; maybe they were imported from OB) with only a couple of upvotes.
When I was initially reading through some of the sequences, I didn't upvote them at all, and I continue to not upvote them even now.
Initially I didn't notice the voting mechanism at all, because I hadn't yet created an account. Then after I registered, I didn't bother because EY already has a jillion points, and because those posts had already been green-lit so registering my approval wouldn't have much effect.
I've done the same. When I stumbled upon lesswrong, it's like I got sucked into a vortex. I just kept reading and reading and reading, until I essentially ran out of things to read. I didn't care about voting or commenting, just reading. Then I realized there are other people here besides Eliezer and other posts too. I realized the community here is pretty interesting, so I decided to join in.