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shokwave comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! - Less Wrong
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I have found that some of the time you can make up for a (perceived) lack of intellect with a little work, and this is true (from my own experience) here on LessWrong: when about to comment on an issue, it pays big dividends to use the search feature to check for something related in previous posts with which you can refine, change, or bolster your position. Of the many times I have done it, twice I caught myself in grievous and totally embarrassing errors!
For what it's worth, commenting on LW is so far from normal conversation and normal internet use that most intellects haven't developed methods for it; they have to grind through mostly the same processes as everyone else - and nobody can actually tell if it took you five seconds or five minutes to type your reply. My own replies might be left in the comment box for hours, to be reread with a fresh mind later and changed entirely.
tl;dr Don't be afraid to comment!
This is interesting-- LW seems to be pretty natural for me. I think the only way my posting here is different from anywhere else is that my sentences might be more complex.
On the other hand, once I had a choice, I've spent most of my social life in sf fandom, where the way I write isn't wildly abnormal, I think.
Anyone who's reading this, do you think what's wanted at LW is very different from what's wanted in other venues?
Wow, that is interesting ... conditional on more people feeling this way (LW is natural), I might just have focused my intellect on rhetoric and nonreasonable convincing to the point that following LW's guidelines is difficult, and then committed the typical mind fallacy and assumed everyone had too.
Actually, I've come to notice that rhetoric and other so-called Dark Arts are still worth their weight in gold on LW, except when the harder subjects (math and logic) are at hand.
But LessWrong commenters definitely have plenty of psychological levers, and the demographic uniformity only makes them more effective. For a simple example, I guesstimate that, in just about any comment, a passing mention of how smart LessWrongers are is worth on average 3 or 4 extra karma points - and this is about as old as tricks can get.
Of course, LessWrongers are smarter than most people, but what's really striking is the willingness to update. And the modesty.
Yup, our only flaw is modesty.
I've noticed that karma points accrue for witty quips too.
But LessWrongers are really smart.
That is a true but banal observation that shouldn't be worth karma. Of course, so was this response. And so forth.