suppose it's true that Less Wrong is the highest-quality relatively-general-interest forum on the web. In that case, we're sitting on a big opportunity to grow Less Wrong into the "standard" general-interest discussion hub for people with high intelligence and high metacognition (shorthand: "intellectual elites").
I'm skeptical. Suppose it is true--it doesn't follow that there's a realistic possibility of broadening the appeal, much less making it the "standard" general-interest discussion hub. I think there are dozens of reasons it's unlikely, but off the top of my head: there are many publications and forums already motivated to do so who have deeper pockets, and it is incredibly hard to corral contributors in such a way that they generate high value content for you without wanting to captain their own ships.
But that's supposing it's true. An outside observer might reasonably see a little bit of hubris in the claim that LW is the highest-level discussion forum on the entire internet. And I think it's pretty obvious that it's not general interest. It's a very narrow set of interests: cognitive bias, AI, philosophy, cryogenics, philanthropy, evo psych, economics, lifehacking. And those interests are approached from a very unique ideological perspective--most people just aren't into cryogenics, whether that's rational or not. Even people very interested in one or more of these topics may not be interested in the others, and they're very likely to be interested in other topics, which LW does not have room for. Such as celebrity gossip, or sous-vide cooking, or hip hop.
a little bit of hubris in the claim that LW is the highest-level discussion forum on the entire internet
But... can you name any higher-level discussions forums for me? Those who tell me LW isn't the best discussion hub always fail to point me to a better one.
cryogenics
I think you mean "cryonics."
Is Less Wrong, despite its flaws, the highest-quality relatively-general-interest forum on the web? It seems to me that, to find reliably higher-quality discussion, I must turn to more narrowly focused sites, e.g. MathOverflow and the GiveWell blog.
Many people smarter than myself have reported the same impression. But if you know of any comparably high-quality relatively-general-interest forums, please link me to them!
In the meantime: suppose it's true that Less Wrong is the highest-quality relatively-general-interest forum on the web. In that case, we're sitting on a big opportunity to grow Less Wrong into the "standard" general-interest discussion hub for people with high intelligence and high metacognition (shorthand: "intellectual elites").
Earlier, Jonah Sinick lamented the scarcity of elites on the web. How can we get more intellectual elites to engage on the web, and in particular at Less Wrong?
Some projects to improve the situation are extremely costly:
Code changes, however, could be significantly less costly. New features or site structure elements could increase engagement by intellectual elites. (To avoid priming and contamination, I'll hold back from naming specific examples here.)
To help us figure out which code changes are most likely to increase engagement on Less Wrong by intellectual elites, specific MIRI volunteers will be interviewing intellectual elites who (1) are familiar enough with Less Wrong to be able to simulate which code changes might cause them to engage more, but who (2) mostly just lurk, currently.
In the meantime, I figured I'd throw these ideas to the community for feedback and suggestions.