prase comments on How can we get more and better LW contrarians? - Less Wrong

58 Post author: Wei_Dai 18 April 2012 10:01PM

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Comment author: prase 19 April 2012 05:09:40PM *  7 points [-]

I note that you've personally made 2 meta/community posts out of 7, whereas I've only made about 3 out of 58

I plead guilty and promise to avoid making meta posts in the future. (Edit: I don't object specifically to your meta-posts but to the overall relative number of meta discussions lately.)

Nevertheless, I doubt calling for more contrarians is helpful with respect to your purposes. The question how to increase the number of contrarians is naturally answered by proposals to create more contrarian-friendly environment, which, if implemented, attract disproportionally high amount of people who like to be contrarians, whatever the local orthodoxy is. My suggestion is, instead, to try to attract more diverse set of people, even those who are not interested in topics you consider important. You would profit indirectly, since some of them would get eventually engaged in your favourite discussions and bring fresh ideas. Incidentally they will also somewhat lower the level of discourse, but I am afraid it is an inevitable side effect of any anti-cult policy.