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JGWeissman comments on Help Fund Lukeprog at SIAI - Less Wrong
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Should this really be under main, and promoted at that? My impression was that main posts, and especially promoted ones were supposed to be reserved for posts discussing rationality and its applications, meant to be held up as examples of our best work. I have nothing against lukeprog, the SIAI, or this effort, but I don't think this really qualifies.
Yes, absolutely. Calls for action in support of causes associated with this site are material for promoted front page articles. It is valuable to send the message that participating, actually donating money rather than just thinking "That's nice, SIAI is hiring another research fellow", is important by giving prominence to the announcement.
But there aren't causes associated with the site. If the site were about promoting the SIAI, I would agree with you. But LessWrong is about rationality, not promoting SIAI, even though those two sometimes coincide.
I can't disagree more. That's just telling people a bottom line. We need to be promoting articles that say why the SIAI is doing good work, and discussing the rationality behind supporting it. Not just telling people that, "Hey, there's this organization we think is great and you should donate to it."
That is simply false. LW was created by SIAI with the purpose of generating rationalists interested in reducing existential risks, and accepting and even encouraging that it might produce rationalists interested in other causes.
In the early days, we specifically avoided talking about SIAI, FAI, and existential risks because we didn't want shiny discussions about those topics to overwhelm our work on rationality. Now that we are more established, we no longer do that. From the beginning, that policy was meant to be temporary.
False dichotomy. We have had lots of discussions about the effectiveness of SIAI. We can also have announcements of when they have a project that needs funding. There are people here who are already convinced SIAI is an effective charity worth supporting, but need some encouragement to actually support it. That is why this kind of announcement is important.
You're right. That was a horribly crafted sentence, in many ways. They are clearly associated. But the site is about rationality, not the SIAI. That was my point. (The statement is also patently false if you take "rationality" as a cause, which is entirely reasonable.)
Sure. But that doesn't mean it needs to be in Main and promoted...
From About Less Wrong
That is in the context of telling people new to the site what sort of article they should write if they want to publish in main, and it describes the primary usage, but it is not comprehensive. The actual use of the Main section does include this sort of announcement. It is normal, generally accepted by the community, and has been going on since LW split into Main and Discussion sections.
In general you will find that the actual use of many things in life does not match up with original intentions or simplified descriptions.
Judging by the upvotes of my original comment, there is not as much unity on that point as you seem to believe.
And frankly, the context doesn't matter. If posts like these are acceptable, than that statement is patently false, and should be changed. If it is not false, then posts like this are inappropriate on main. But with as clear as that statement is, there is no room for consistency between it and a post like this being in main.
That's an incredibly patronizing tone to take, and I don't appreciate it.
But putting that aside, this is largely irrelevant statement (And its irrelevance only serves to highlight the insult). I don't disagree. But what bearing does that have on what should be? Should we attempt to describe what types of posts are acceptable in main accurately, or should we not? There may be arguments on both sides. But that's not one of them.
What does the description "is acceptable" refer to? Acceptable by what criterion? The real question is whether things like this should be encouraged or discouraged, using whatever methods are at our disposal, including establishing a policy for moving "off-topic" posts out of Main. Instead, you seem to be appealing to an existing social attitude, which shouldn't be a major factor, as it too can be influenced by good arguments and other means.
Fair point. I had already expressed that I thought they should be separate, though, and was looking for other places that similar opinions had been expressed.
Whether these opinions are right vs. whether they are popular.