falenas108 comments on Open Thread, Jun. 8 - Jun. 14, 2015 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Gondolinian 08 June 2015 12:04AM

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Comment author: cousin_it 09 June 2015 04:39:33PM 7 points [-]

Judging from the recent decline of LW, it seems that the initial success of LW wasn't due to rationality, but rather due to Eliezer's great writing. If we want LW to become a fun place again, we should probably focus on writing skills instead of rationality skills. Not everyone can be as good as Eliezer or Yvain, but there's probably a lot of low hanging fruit. For example, we pretty much know what kind of fiction would appeal to an LWish audience (HPMOR, Worm, Homestuck...) and writing more of it seems like an easier task than writing fiction with mass-market appeal.

Does anyone else feel that it might be a promising direction for the community? Is there a more structured way to learn writing skills?

Comment author: falenas108 09 June 2015 09:57:58PM 1 point [-]

That's not necessarily the case. Low hanging fruit seems like a plausible alternative, as well as the success of meet-up groups or other real-life rationality things replacing online interactions.