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TheOtherDave comments on Less Wrong’s political bias - Less Wrong
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How confident are you that this is actually true?
Literally speaking not at all, since it was an exaggeration. 10 pages of praise is clearly not necessary.
That said, I strongly believe that posts containing criticism of Less Wrong on average get many more downvotes (and less upvotes) than posts which remark on how great Less Wrong is. For example, I have seen "joke" posts on how Yudkowski is god that get about +50 points (was a while ago, would need to check to confirm memory). On the other hand, every time I post a criticism of Less Wrong, it gets a lot of downvotes (though usually some upvotes as well), and as for criticism posted by other people.... well I don't see a lot of that, do you?
(nods) That's a far more defensible statement. It might even be true.
I'm not sure what you mean by "a lot". I've seen more criticism of LessWrong here than I've seen criticism of RationalWiki, for example, and less than I've seen criticism of the Catholic Church. More than I've seen criticism of Dan Dannett. I'm not sure if I've seen more criticism of Less Wrong than of Richard Dawkins, or less. What's your standard?
We could instead ask: should there be more of it? Should there be less? I suspect that's a wrong question as well though. Mostly, I think the criticism should be of higher quality. Most of what I see is tedious and redundant. Of course, Sturgeon's Law applies in this as in everything.
All of that said, if I were to list off the top of my head the top ten critics of LessWrong who post on LW , your name would not even come up, so if you are attempting to suggest that you are somehow the singular contrarian voice on this site I can only conclude that you haven't read much of the site's archives.
There is also more criticism of Less Wrong here than there is criticism of people who think that the world is run by lizard-people. This is because Less Wrong is more relevant to Less Wrong than Lizard-people, not because the lizard-believers are actually considered more credible.
The only reasonable standard to me is comparing the amount of criticism with the amount of praise. I see much more posts talking about how great Less Wrong is than I see criticism of Less Wrong. More worryingly, the criticism of Less Wrong that I do see is on other forums, where it is widely agreed that Less Wrong is subject to group think, but which is summarily ignored here.
I assume you aren't actually suggesting that RationalWiki, the Catholic Church, Dan Dannett and Richard Dawkins are as irrelevant to Less Wrong as lizard-people. I picked a few targets that seemed vaguely relevant; if you think I should pick different targets, let me know what they are.
Why is that? This doesn't seem true to me at all.
Why does this worry you?
This might be true. Can you unpack what you mean by "group think"? (Or what you think those other people on other forums whom you're reporting the statements of mean by it, if that's more relevant?)
No, I am saying that comparing criticism of Less Wrong with criticism of other websites/people is not a valid metric at all, since the total amount written on the subject differs between each. You can't look at absolute amounts of criticism here, it has to be relative or merely the total amount of posts would determine the answer.
It worries me that a lot of the criticism of Less Wrong is made outside of Less Wrong because this indicates that the criticism is not accepted here and Less Wrong exists in a bubble.
The exact criticism of Less Wrong usually isn't very good, since people tend to not spend a lot of time writing thoughtful criticisms of websites that they aren't affiliated with. It usually amounts to "gives off a bad vibe", "uses their own little language", "Copies Yudkowski in everything they believe" or "Disproportionally holds extreme views without thinking this is odd." All of this indicates what I call group think, which is the act of paying too much attention to what others in the in-group believe and being isolated from the rest of the world.
You realize this is still true if one replaces "Less Wrong" with any other community.
Which would mean there is no genuinely rationalist (inviting updates) community anywhere,
How specifically would it mean that?
Imagine that you have a community X, which is perfectly rational and perfectly updating. (I am not saying LW is that community; this is just an example.) Of course there would be many people who disagree with X; some of them would be horribly offended by the views of X. Those people would criticize X a lot. So even with a perfectly updating super rationalist community, the worst criticism would come from outside.
Also, most criticism would come from outside simply because there are more non-members than members, and if the group is not secret and is somehow interesting, many non-members will express their opinions about the group.
Therefore, "a lot of the criticism of Less Wrong is made outside of Less Wrong" is not an evidence against rationality of LessWrong, because we would expect the same result both in universes where LW is rational and in universes where LW is irrational.
You write "so", but that doesn't follow. You are tacitly assuming that a community has to be held together by shared beliefs, but that does not match genuine rationality, since one cannot predetermie where rational enquiry will lead -- to attempt to do so is to introduce confirmation bias., You also seem to think that the "worst" criticism is some kind of vitriolic invective. But what is of concern to genuine rationalists is the best -- best argued, most effective -- criticism.
If the group is discussing specialised topics, then good criticism can only come from those who are familiar with those topics.
You are still missing the point that a genuine rationalist community would invite criticism.
All right. Thanks for clarifying.
Maybe your criticisms of Less Wrong just aren't all that well-reasoned. Plenty of Less Wrong criticism gets upvoted here. The most-upvoted post of all time is a criticism of MIRI, and several of my own most-upvoted comments are direct criticisms of Eliezer, e.g. this and this. See also this much-upvoted post.
Thanks for the reply. When you suggest that maybe the problem is on my end, are you really just offering that as a mere possibility, or do you believe that that is actually the case? I'm asking because while it is of course entirely reasonable to say that the fault lies with me, nobody as of yet has told me what specifically is wrong with my posts (other than: "not enough facts", or: "You sound left-wing"). If the latter is the case, please tell me what specifically I could improve.
The first post you link to is the one by Holden that I specifically referred to above as the only type of criticism that does get upvoted. The reasons for this are varied:
1) Holden is high status: Nobody is going to tell Holden to shut up and go away (as I've been told to) because the mere fact that he is taking the MIRI seriously is good for the MIRI and Less Wrong.
2) Holden is exceedingly polite and says nothing that could even be taken as an excuse to be offended
3) Holden goes out of his way to praise Less Wrong as a community, which of course makes people here feel good.
4) Holden has spent a ridiculous amount of time and effort writing and supporting that exceedingly lengthy post, well beyond normal standards.
5) Holden doesn't actually say anything that is considered Taboo here on Less Wrong. His post defends the proposition that donating to MIRI isn't the best possible expenditure of money. That's hardly going to rile people up.
Holden's post is the equivalent of James Randi going to a dowser's forum, and writing a 10 page thesis on why he thinks dowsing isn't 100% effective, while repeatedly saying how he might be wrong, and he really wants to be able to change his mind, and isn't the idea of dowsing wonderful and aren't dowsers great people. Of course the dowsers would be very happy with a post like that: it only validates them to have something like James Randi say all that. This does NOT mean that dowsers are all rational individuals who are happy to receive criticism of their ideas.
The same point holds for your own posts criticizing Eliezer, albeit to a lesser extent. And again, criticizing Eliezer is not taboo here. Criticizing Less Wrong itself, more so.
I agree that Yudkowsky hero worship is extremely creepy and should stop.
Fair enough. What's the most recent example of Yudkowsky hero worship you've observed here?