= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Aurini comments on Yes, a blog. - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (106)
And this is precisely why I haven't lost all hope for the future. (That, and we've got some really bright people working furiously on reducing x-risk.) On rare occasions, humanity impresses me. I could write sonnets about Wikipedia. And I hate when so-called educators try to imply Wikipedia is low status or somehow making us dumber. It's the kind of conclusion that the Gatekeepers of Knowledge wish was accurate. How can you possibly get access to that kind of information without paying your dues? It's just immoral.
I pose this question: if you had to pick just one essay to introduce someone to LW, which one would you pick and why? I'd like to spread access to the information in the sequences so that it can benefit others as it did me, but I'm at a loss as to where specifically to start. Just tossing a link to the list of sequences is.....overwhelming, to say the least. And I've been perusing them for so long that I can't remember what it's like to read with fresh eyes, and the essays that have the most impact on me now were incomprehensible to me a year ago, I think.
How much does that happen? It is my understanding that educators don't mind students using Wikipedia to gather information, as long as they use Wikipedia's references to validate that information, and then cite those references. That is, Wikipedia is a valid tool for finding sources and summaries of those sources, but it is not a source itself.
The anti-wikipedia bias has shifted from being a pretentious hold-over from the "I spent 8 years learning the names of the relevant sources in my field" to an outright cognitive bias held by the uneducated "Where'd you get that fact - wikipedia? - in that case, I'm allowed to ignore your argument. I get my facts from talk radio."
That sounds like a perfect example of how knowing about biases can hurt people. It's similar to something I often see in religious arguments: someone who wants to rationalize away an argument will often come up with a really flimsy counter-argument, overlook its flaws, and stop thinking about the issue immediately. It's a particularly pathological case of being more critical of opposing views than ones you agree with.