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shaih comments on Yes, a blog. - Less Wrong
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Comments (106)
Maybe I'm just being habitually contrarian here for no good reason, but it seems to me that for a supposedly "rationalist" community, people here seem to be far too willing to accept claims of LessWrong exceptionality based on shockingly weak evidence. Group-serving bias is possibly the most basic of all human biases, and we cannot even overcome that little?
Claiming that your group is the best in the world, or among the best, is something nearly every single group in history did, and all had some anecdotal "evidence" for it. Priors are very strongly against this claim, even after including these anecdotes.
Yet, in spite of these priors, the group you consider yourself member of is somehow the true best group ever? Really? Where's hard evidence for this? I'm tempted to point to Eliezer outright making things up on costs of cryonics multiple times, and ignoring corrections from me and others, in case halo effect prevents you from seeing that he's not really extraordinarily less wrong.
I'm not saying a view point on whether I agree or not with your premise, I don't think this is the best group ever but I have not been here long enough to know if others do.
I would however like to point out
is full of Ad hominem errors that to me distract from your argument
There's no ad hominem here. The original post claims that LessWrong is great, and taw is pointing out some things that suggest that LessWrong is not great. An ad hominem here would be attacking Academian, not attacking Eliezer.
Typo: Academician->Academian
Whoops. Thanks!
How does attacking Eliezer here add to the argument?
To a large extent, and especially at the time this was written LW was practically synonymous with Eliezer. Also, Taw is (at least primarily) referring to things Eliezer Said on LW, thus its seems pretty relevant to the question of LW's greatness.
I think I understand now thank you.
Qiaochu is questioning the presence of "ad hominem". This issue doesn't depend on the worth of the argument whose discussion hypothetically contains the error.
and Taw was attacking Eliezer because Eliezer is so associated with LW, and LW with him, that problems with one will often (at least be taken as) problems with the other. If Eliezer is systematically wrong, so is the sequences, and thereby probably LW too.