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Brillyant comments on Open Thread February 25 - March 3 - Less Wrong
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Comments (354)
I've noticed I don't read 'Main' posts anymore.
When I come to LW, I click to the Discussion almost instinctively. I'd estimate it has been four weeks since I've looked at Main. I sometimes read new Slate Star Codex posts (super good stuff, if you are unfamiliar) from LW's sidebar. I sometimes notice interesting-sounding 'Recent Comments' and click on them.
My initial thought is that I don't feel compelled to read Main posts because they are the LW-approved ideas, and I'm not super interested in listening to a bunch of people agreeing with another. Maybe that is a caricature, not sure.
Anyone else Discussion-centric in their LW use?
Also, the Meetup stuff is annoying noise. I'm very sympathetic if placing it among posts helps to drive attendance. By all means, continue if it helps your causes. But it feels spammy to me.
Alternative hypothesis: you have been conditioned to click on discussion because it has a better reward schedule.
Yes, likely. If you mean the discussion is more varied and interesting.
I'm more likely to find discussion topics and comments in my areas of interest, while Main seems to be mostly about AI, math, health, and productivity, none of which are particularly interesting for me.
Partially because it's much more active over here.
It seems to me that is likely the result of of many people feeling like me rather the the cause of them feeling that way.
Activity seems like a positive feedback loop*- because there are more comments in discussion, people spend more time and comment more in discussion, and their comments in discussion are more likely to get responded to, which brings them back to discussion, and so on.
*That is, something that is both a cause and a result.
Sure.
But why did I evolve to stop going to Main and go exclusively to Discussion? That behavior might be reinforced by the lack of activity, but the leading cause (for me in my best estimation) was I came to see the content as overwhelmingly LW-approved stuff.
When I read blacktrance's comment, I see specific topics- AI, math, health, productivity- that they're not interested in, that Main focuses on. When I read your comments, it sounds like you're not as sensitive to topics as to styles of discussion, where you're more interested in disagreements than in agreements. Am I reading that difference correctly?
Sure, I suppose. I generally use forum sites for discussion. I'm not too terribly interested in reading LW "publications", I'm more interested in engagin in discussion and reading commentary in regard to issues pertaining to rationality, etc.
The distinction between Main and Discussion articles has noever made much sense to me. It seems to me to be some blend of perceived quality, relation to rationality (as LW defines it) and other LW topics of interest, group politics, EY mandate, etc. Don't really care all that much...just that it was interesting that I ended up in Discussion almost exclusively.
I'd agree the topics in main seem to be less interesting to me, too, now that I think about it.
I mainly skim http://lesswrong.com/topcomments/?t=day and http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/topcomments/?t=day, then when I see something interesting I look at where it comes from.
I generally find Main posts uninteresting, or overlong and based on some incorrect premise or other.