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solipsist comments on Consider giving an explanation for your deletion this time around. "Harry Yudkowsky and the Methods of Postrationality: Chapter One: Em Dashes Colons and Ellipses, Littérateurs Go Wild" - Less Wrong
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Comments (204)
Sorry for being unclear. I meant that any subculture that is allergic to parody of itself is just inviting less fair and less jocular criticism. Eliezer has already greatly damaged LessWrong's reputation by making it seem cultish. Making comments about how people are sensitive to appearances of cultishness and thus it's good for parody of that alleged cultishness to be banned, is just sowing the wind. I think that there are many interesting and independent intellectuals on LessWrong and I don't want them to be tarred as discreditable cultists. And that's why I would like it to be known that LessWrong is capable of self-parody and isn't going to pathetically grasp at credibility it never had in the first place.
Oh, OK. Then I did not clearly communicate.
I'm not worried about a clutish appearance -- I'm worried about a self-absorbed appearance. People who-have-heard-of-but-are-not-really-into LessWrong, in my conversations with them, have dismissed the site as an echo-chamber of inside references. That's what I'm worried about, and a self-parody story about Eliezer-Yudkowsky's fictional creation interacting with him does not help mitigate that impression. I'm not saying it could never be done, but it has to be really good to outweigh the costs.
In my experience, this is one of the most common patterns of dismissal out there. It's also one of the easiest to dismiss: every intellectual movement will contain communications among insiders, and those communications will use terms that outsiders won't be familiar with.
"Wow, you mean people write for their audience? What a surprise!"
Or: "Every field has inside references." And then list examples from whichever mathematical or scientific field you're most familiar with.
Now, whether or not this is a desirable pattern to fall into is another issue entirely.
From my anecdotal evidence, it seems that this impression goes away after "real life" interactions with Less Wrongers. There seems to be a (perceived?) discrepancy between the lesswrong.com community and the aspiring rationalist community attached to the site.
What could possibly appear more self-absorbed than censoring without comment, recourse, or discussion, for the purpose of promoting a certain image?
Or do you possibly take seriously the idea that you can censor your way to an excellent reputation among those who love the truth?
I'm not convinced this is a serious question. If you spent 2 minutes writing down ways to appear self-absorbed, do you honestly think you would not come up with a better plan? If your answer is "no", then we need to move way back to find common ground.
The mission of the LessWrong discussion board is not to collect pictures of funny cats. Deleting pictures of funny cats does not stifle dissent. Deleting pictures of funny cats does not obstruct the search for the Truth. Deleting pictures of funny cats does not make you look self-absorbed, even if you do so explicitly to cultivate a better image.
I guess it comes down to a question: was the original post deleted without comment because it was just another "funny cat" posting, or was it deleted without comment because it parodied a funny cat who is taken gigantically seriously around here.
I do know that at the time it was deleted it had fairly positive karma. I do know that on its face it did not appear to be a funny cat post, that is, it referred to a lot of the same things that acceptable posts refer to as opposed to being completely unrelated to the kinds of things the site is intended to discuss.
I honestly don't have any idea who or how or why it was deleted. At least for me, that is part of the problem.
You said "hero-worshipping", but okay, I retracted the comment. Also, very clever how you made it seem like you accidentally mis-typed "cultish".