komponisto comments on The noncentral fallacy - the worst argument in the world? - Less Wrong

157 Post author: Yvain 27 August 2012 03:36AM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 19 September 2012 12:59:26PM -2 points [-]

since you're lucky enough to be part of a physical community of "similar" people (in which, of course, you happen to have high status), your brain thinks they are the ones who "really matter" -- as opposed to abstract characters on the internet who weren't part of the ancestral environment (and who never fail to critique you whenever they can).

Was Eliezer "lucky" to have cofounded the Singularity Institute and Overcoming Bias? "Lucky" to have written the Sequences? "Lucky" to have founded LessWrong? "Lucky" to have found kindred minds, both online and in meatspace? Does he just "happen" to be among them?

Or has he, rather, searched them out and created communities for them to come together?

That doesn't change the fact that this is is an online community, and as such, is for us abstract characters, not your real-life dinner companions. You should be taking advice from the latter about running this site to about the same extent that Alicorn should be taking advice from this site about how to run her dinner parties.

The online community of LessWrong does not own LessWrong. EY owns LessWrong, or some combination of EY, the SI, and whatever small number of other people they choose to share the running of the place with. To a limited extent it is for us, but its governance is not at all by us, and it wouldn't be LessWrong if it was. The system of government here is enlightened absolutism.

Comment author: komponisto 19 September 2012 01:22:31PM *  16 points [-]

since you're lucky enough to be part of a physical community of "similar" people

Was Eliezer "lucky" to have cofounded the Singularity Institute and Overcoming Bias?

The causes of his being in such a happy situation (is that better?) were clearly not the point here, and, quite frankly, I think you knew that.

But if you insist on an answer to this irrelevant rhetorical question, the answer is yes. Eliezer_2012 is indeed quite fortunate to have been preceded by all those previous Eliezers who did those things.

EY owns LessWrong

Then, like I implied, he should just admit to making a decision on the basis of his own personal preference (if indeed that's what's going on), instead of constructing a rationalization about the opinions of offline folks being somehow more important or "appropriately" filtered.

Comment author: DaFranker 19 September 2012 06:30:07PM 0 points [-]

(...) on the basis of his own personal preference (...)

I would replace preference with hypothesis of what constitutes the optimal rationality-refining community.

They are sensibly the same, but I find the latter to be a more useful reduction that is more open to being refined in turn.

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