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Lumifer comments on Lesswrong, Effective Altruism Forum and Slate Star Codex: Harm Reduction - Less Wrong
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Comments (150)
So, nit-picking? Yes, it's popular on LW :-/ but (a) you are still free to ignore those; and (b) as opposed to the example with the cop, there is no inherent power imbalance. Nothing prevents you from going meta and pointing out the difference between what is important and what is not.
Do I read you right in that you want more co-travelers in figuring out problems and solutions and less critics who carefully examine your text for minor flaws and gotchas, basically?
On reflection, I'm not sure that nitpicking is quite the problem that I'm pointing at, but I don't think I have a very good handle on what is. (I do think nitpicking is a problem.)
Maybe next time I have that feeling, I'll just post anyway and see what happens.
It often takes a special effort to -notice- that a criticism isn't meaningful, especially when it is correct - especially because Less Wrong entertains a -much- higher level of pedant than will generally be encountered elsewhere. More problematically, pedantry tends to get upvoted, which means people may pay too much attention to it, and also that it is being encouraged.
If we're interested in discouraging pedantry-for-the-sake-of-pedantry, I'd lean towards implementing an applause-lights keyword to indicate that a criticism may be valid, but doesn't actually add anything to what is being said, along the lines of how "Updating" was used as an applause-lights keyword to counterbalance the generally negative attitude people start with towards admitting wrongness.
True -- but I think it's a very useful skill to develop and practice.
And that is probably a feature of the local culture by now, heavily supported by the meme of how you can't make even one tiny little itty bitty mistake when programming the AI because if you do it's all paperclips all the time.
I call such things "technically correct, but irrelevant", but I don't think this expression functions well as an applause-lights switch. Ideas?
The best opposite to "pedantry" I can come up with is "pragmatic." Pragmatism is a relatively good value on Less Wrong, but I don't see a good application.
Yours seems good. It concedes the argument attempted to be raised, shutting off further discussion - a very desirable quality when dealing with somebody who is specifically looking for something to argue with - and rebuts the fundamental problem, redirecting future attention there. (Minor shift for reasons I have trouble explicating, but which seems a stronger, slightly harsher version of the sentiment - "Technically correct. Also irrelevant.") If it's used appropriately, and consistently, I think it could become an applause-light within the sub-culture here.