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erratio comments on Engaging Intellectual Elites at Less Wrong - Less Wrong
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Quoting this because IMO it's the most important of the lot. Almost all the people I think of as 'old guard' barely post anymore because they're too busy working at CFAR and/or working on personal projects
Retirees have the wisdom of experience, are seasoned writers, and have few external obligations. Contributing to LW would not be a waste of their time or abilities.
How many retirees post here?
Do people know retired professors or other smart retired people who would do well on Less Wrong?
As one data point, my father has been retired for 7 years. He got a PhD in physics and then became a software engineer after deciding he didn't really enjoy research. He's interested in LessWrong-y topics like rationality, optimal philanthropy, and some of the areas of philosophy that are often discussed here. He's read and enjoyed some of the articles I've linked him to on LessWrong. He should be a shoe-in, right?
But he didn't grow up in a time when online communities were a thing. They're just not part of his life and he has no interest in joining one.
Just curious: do you know he has no interest, or do you assume he has no interest?
Yeah, I realized that while writing it. You're right - I don't know for sure that he has no interest at all. Although it is true that he hasn't made an account here despite reading and enjoying some posts here.
I have also never heard him mention any other online communities, and I talk to him often enough that I'd expect it to come up.
I think you may be underestimating the amount of gentle hand-holding necessary for someone to develop an affordance, and think it might be worth seriously presenting it to him as a potential hobby.
StackExchange site solves this problem by gradually increasing user powers with their karma. Then even if the old guard spends less time online, their actions are more visible.
On the other hand, there are not as many "actions" one can do on LW. And we probably wouldn't want to limit things like "announcing a new meetup" to old users.
Here is a list of possible LW actions that could require some karma threshold:
Beyond that, I don't know. Perhaps users with huge karma could get ×2 or ×3 multipliers when voting, but more than that would probably be a bad idea.