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Morendil comments on Elitism isn't necessary for refining rationality. - Less Wrong
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Okay. That's a good point. Though I'd like to ask you to take a moment to understand where I'm coming from:
I find LessWrong, and go "A clearing of sanity in this jungle of irrationality? Great!" I see that the clearing of sanity wants to improve it's website in John's proposed rewrites thread. (I thought he had been chosen to do this task but evidently, he just up and started a thread.)
As a web professional who knows things about web marketing, I could see that if LW wants to grow, they're doing it wrong. I say so in John's thread. This doesn't get anywhere, so I make a chart, and I post about it.
This becomes one of the top 30 discussions of all time. I volunteer to help LessWrong grow, and I'm given access to the LessWrong Google Analytics account.
A bunch of people commented with concerns about how growth could destroy the culture in the discussions, including a link to the wiki on the Eternal September phenomenon.
I discovered a comment that I found upsetting about "keeping out the intellectual riff-raff" and told Luke about it. I mention in an email that "my ethics do not allow me to do work for an organization that allows elitism." I assumed he did not want LessWrong to have a reputation for "elitism" (regardless of how it's defined internally, the external world will most likely think it looks bad) so I figured he'd do something about it.
Now I'm in a pickle. I do not want to destroy the nice clearing of sanity by deluging it in newbies, but I have volunteered to help it grow. Being a responsible person, I can neither forget the volunteer offer or just risk destroying the culture without even thinking it through. Instead of giving up, I think of solutions to the problem and invite the group to criticize these and share their wisdom with me in my Preventing "endless September" discussion.
Luke says he's not very worried about endless September even though Eliezer is definitely worried about discussion quality and a whole bunch of people posted concerns, but he invites me to discuss it because he might change his mind.
My concerns are complex and they won't fit in a comment, and people had been interested in criticizing my ideas so far, so I make a new thread, a call for agreement. Bad idea if you go by the popularity of that, but I've noted to self that people prefer to have few to no meta threads and hopefully, my original reasons are understandable.
A bunch more people express that they're in favor of "elitism" most notably in a comment with over 20 upvotes: "LessWrong is elitist:" ... "I wish LessWrong was more elitist!". Though it's still not clear what they mean, I find the amount of "elitism" talk to be rather alarming, because calling one's self or group "elitist" makes a very bad impression, even if you guys are all wonderful people. But for all I know, the 20+ people that upvoted that comment interpreted it in the worst possible sense of the word and really did mean to express that they're jerks, and may have not even stopped to consider whether the original commenter didn't mean it that way before pressing the upvote button.
At this point, two new obstacles to me helping LessWrong grow appear: One, helping LessWrong grow in order to be seen as "elitist" by the world will only smear their public reputation. This would hurt the site and make the parent organization look bad. Two, if LessWrong really is "elitist" in the nasty sense of the word, I have to refuse to help them for ethical reasons.
The people here are describing themselves and each other in public as "elitist". But some of them use their real names on the forum. This is the internet where what you say might last forever. Yet here they are smearing themselves and each other, the LessWrong website, and the Singularity Institute (by association), as "elitist".
Nobody seems to think that this is a bad idea but me. The clearing of sanity in a jungle has begun to look too much like the jungle itself to me. At this point, it's either try to explain it to them or revoke my offer to volunteer and leave the site. I figure "These guys care about rationality, right? How hard can it be? I'll explain my view and we'll probably come to a nice sensible agreement of some kind."
That attempt (this thread) didn't go over too well, for reasons that still aren't completely clear to me due to the large number of completely different criticisms. Few have responded to the topic itself, so I don't really know whether people agree or disagree. Some people think they speak for the group, but I have never seen that work out on LessWrong - so far, those I've seen speaking for the group have been verifiably incorrect. So I made a poll. Where I am at right now is that even though some (Schminux, Mitchell_Porter) seem to think I have potential to be a good writer here, I am so terribly put off by the way people are smearing themselves as elitists that if it doesn't get resolved somehow, I'm more likely to throw up than ever write you guys an article.
I either have to try to resolve my concerns about the "elitism" talk, or go do something better with my time than stay here being smeared as an "elitist" with the rest of you.
If anyone can suggest a resolution to this problem, I'm more than willing to hear it.
Thanks for the obviously thought-out response.
This, perhaps, is where you missed an opportunity to apply a lesson from the Sequences. There is no urgency to solving the problem, the urgent task is to understand it, and it is this task that requires time.
You might also have missed subtle cues that you were violating tacit norms of behaviour, for instance when Luke said "we could debate in this comment thread" and you ignored that in favor of making a new post.
This stands out a bit from the rest of your comment: it suggests you are idealizing the community, rather than acknowledging the consequences of its being made up of human beings equipped with standard issue human brains.
The reason I suggest you write about substantive topics is that this will give you more of a chance to get acculturated into the thinking tools that are the cause of your perceiving this as "a clearing of sanity in a jungle".
Even for the most acculturated among this community, best performance consists of applying some of these thinking tools some of the time, somewhat competently. Rationality remains the exception rather than the rule - this is implied in the very name "Less Wrong".
Play a round of Rationalist Taboo for yourself (i.e. don't try to second-guess what anyone else means by that term) on "elitist". Spell out what it is exactly that your ethics does not allow you to support or be seen as supporting. Approach this question lightly, with an open mind and no bottom line already filled in. Now relate this specific question to the way this community approaches ethical questions - you do not have to agree with the community, but you have to grasp what the approach is.
Are you willing to do the above?
If you can steer clear of any meta-discussion (including even allusions to meta topics), this could even be good material for a post.
This was so sane, Morendil. Thank you.
I don't know why I didn't realize that I needed to understand this better before I jumped in. I was ignorant of my own ignorance. Sometimes when you don't realize you're missing a piece of information, there is nothing to warn you. Other times, I see that things are going to be complex. (Which is why I took the time to think it out and wrote something like ten pages on different solutions to Eternal September and their consequences). I also do that at work - I clarify what the purpose of the project is before I code it. For some reason, that little flag was missing here. Now I get to try and guess why.
I think you're right that I don't pick up on hints enough. I really don't get why people hint. That seems dysfunctional to me. I wish they'd just be clear.
The problem isn't that I idealized the community, the problem is ... how do I explain this. I am extremely prone to a particular bias. I know I have it, I just don't know the word for it. I give people too much credit. It's something I do over and over again. Not sure how to stop it. I seem to need to learn about each group's flaws individually.
I started challenging my ideas and using logic at 17, and I've been pretty hard core about it since then. I'm already using a lot of the thinking tools. Apparently I still am not perfect. I feel like I really needed to be part of a group of people capable of pointing out my flaws and giving me ideas I would not have thought of. I am so grateful for this. I will have a chance to find any unseen problems now.
Thank you for that. I feel better about not being perfect. (: Still going to aim for perfection though. (:
I decided to take your and Alicorn's suggestion on this. At first I didn't know what that meant but I have since found the correct reading materials.
I would love to do that. I've been thinking that if I can learn enough about the political sides that seem to be triggered here, I can transcend thinking inside that dichotomy, and perhaps show others how to do the same. That's my thought on how to present it. Do you have anything to suggest in addition?