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Tetronian comments on How to better understand and participate on LW - Less Wrong
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Although I think this is a great list of books to have on LW, is anyone else vaguely disturbed by this idea that you can't contribute meaningfully unless you know about all of these topics? Isn't LW supposed to be about raising the sanity waterline by making rationality more accessible? Posts like this, while useful to people already interested in LW, probably sound extremely off-putting to new users.
Yes. Even understanding that LW addresses high-level topics and there's a lot of useful background information out there, I scoffed at the above sentence. "Maybe, someday, if you work really hard, you'll be able to participate at a baseline level."
"you should read and memorize ..." is right up there too. This brings to mind the picture of a child in elementary school standing at the front of the class reciting their lessons.
Newcomers to LW aren't kids. We are mostly (and I feel I can still say "we") intelligent grownups with lives outside the internet. As Interpolate describes, a list of useful resources to help understand the topics on LW is helpful. A list of required homework before you're considered qualified to post on an internet forum is condescending.
See also why newbies don't read the sequences.
If I come on too strong, it's not because I'm offended or feel personally condescended to. I'm just trying to impress how drastically the tone hobbles the message.
Not disturbed, just in disagreeance. A simple rewording of the post and title into something like "how to better understand Less Wrong" would stop it being potentially off-putting to new users.