CellBioGuy comments on Open Thread February 25 - March 3 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: Coscott 25 February 2014 04:57AM

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Comment author: CellBioGuy 28 February 2014 04:47:48AM 4 points [-]
  • raises hand *

Partially because it's much more active over here.

Comment author: Brillyant 28 February 2014 04:17:05PM 0 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Vaniver 28 February 2014 07:36:57PM 0 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Brillyant 28 February 2014 09:09:06PM 0 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Vaniver 28 February 2014 09:41:18PM 0 points [-]

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?

Comment author: Brillyant 28 February 2014 10:42:12PM 0 points [-]

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.