ChristianKl comments on Ideas on growth of the community - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Lu93 12 August 2015 06:45PM

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Comment author: ChristianKl 13 August 2015 11:04:55AM 2 points [-]

Before wanting to grow "the community" it makes sense to ask what "the community" happens to be. You can count Scott's blog into the community or you can decide that the community is only what's branded as LW.

This community is some kind of organization, and it has a goal. To be precise, it probably has two goals, as I see it: to make existing members more rational to get more members.

I wouldn't consider that to be the main goals.

For me one of the most important goals is developing the "art of rationality". A lot of discussion on LW is not about simply applying existing techniques of how to be rational but to develop new concepts. A while ago someone complained that he read a LW post about how to estimate whether a woman will say yes when asked out for a date as probability.

If you think the goal is effective action, there are a lot of reasons why that's not a good way to approach the subject of asking out a woman. If you on the other hand care about how probability estimates are made in emotionally charged real life situations the inquiry is a lot more interesting.

When it comes to gathering new members quality is more important than quantity. At our Berlin LW meetup we could trivially increase the attendance by putting it on meetup.com. We don't and as a result have a meetup with the kind of people who find the event without having to check meetup.

I would STRONGLY encourage new topics

So, what's stopping you from posting new topics yourself?

Comment author: Lu93 13 August 2015 11:52:45AM 1 point [-]

When it comes to gathering new members quality is more important than quantity.

Exactly the reason why I posted. Nobody wants to make a big community by destroying the quality. That's the main topic of this course I recommended.

For me one of the most important goals is developing the "art of rationality". Would it be easier if there were 10 times more people like you, who want to do the same? Would it be easier if existing people were more rational? Your goal has nothing(or very little) to do with my goals, which is self- and world-improvement. So I would call your and my goals as subgoals with regard to community. If any of our goals would be main goal to the community, the other guy would not have interest to contribute. This is the reason i ask for separation of topics.

So, what's stopping you from posting new topics yourself? I just did, my friend. This topic is on growth of the community. What you want to say is "it's not the topic I'm interested in", and that's the reason I want separation of topics. So that I can speak about growth of the community without bothering you.

Comment author: ChristianKl 13 August 2015 03:56:00PM 0 points [-]

Would it be easier if there were 10 times more people like you, who want to do the same?

Everyone who's like me already knows that LW exists.

Comment author: Lu93 14 August 2015 12:06:18PM -1 points [-]

Do you want to bet?

Comment author: ChristianKl 14 August 2015 12:56:40PM 1 point [-]

It's hard to define the terms of that bet. What am I pointing towards:

I did hear of LW in multiple different contexts online.

I heard it recommended at a CCC event.

I know two people who attended local LW meetups who I meet at QS events.

The week before the first LW Community camp a 99% match turned up on OkCupid. It was a woman who was in Berlin for the LW Community camp. If I wouldn't have known about LW that's also an event that would have made me check out LW.

Not having heard of LW would mean that I would have quite different ways to consume information and hang out with people.

Comment author: Lu93 comment score below threshold [+] (3 children)

Comment author: ChristianKl 14 August 2015 01:50:14PM 0 points [-]

You still need only one man outside LW to be like you to be wrong.

That's arguing with semantics instead of arguing with substance.

there are lot of people on this world

A person who lives in a village in Africa, might have similar genes as I have but they don't live in the same culture as I. The fact that I discovered LW is a function of the culture to which I'm exposed.

LW is not the only source of rationality).

Rationality isn't the only think that make a person like me, to be like me.

Comment author: Lu93 15 August 2015 09:38:05AM * -2 points [-]

You still need only one man outside LW to be like you to be wrong.

That's arguing with semantics instead of arguing with substance.

That is arguing with substance. Say there is probability x someone is like you. Talking about your personality, not genes. N is number of people outside LW. In the first approximation, where "person is a member of LW" is independant of "person is like you." you have (1-x)^N to be right. I have 1-(1-x)^N to be right. If N is big, my probability goes to 1, your goes to 0.

Now, you can say, my approximation is false, which it is. LW influenced you, etc, so there is a correlation. However, unless correlation is 1, there is still a probability for someone to be outside of LW and like you, and if there is a large number N, my probability is still going to 1 and yours is still approaching 0. Exponentially. Now, you can narrow the choice by demanding more similarities, and then this growth would not be strong enough to make up for the smallness of x. But we are talking about someone who could give equal contribution to LW as you(edit: and who would like to develop art of rationality), you can't diminish x too much.

It is pretty shitty someone is down-voting you, you are just making a very common mistake of underestimating exponential growth. They could at least tell you what mistake did you make.

Comment author: ChristianKl 15 August 2015 12:36:03PM 1 point [-]

That is arguing with substance. Say there is probability x someone is like you.

The problem is that you don't focus on the intent of the statement. You try to find a meaning in the statement that's wrong and then focus on that. That goes against the idea of "refuting the central point". Instead of trying to understand where I'm coming from you assume that I haven't thought about what I'm saying.

"Like you" is a very vague category.

There a good chance that you engage in the typical mind fallacy. Your personality is more or less normal and therefore there are a lot of people like you outside.

My own personality is not normal but shaped in contexts. It's shaped by things like doing QS community building where I explained to journalist why QS is the new thing. It's also shaped by Danis Bois perceptive pedagogy.

But we are talking about someone who could give equal contribution to LW as you

That's not what "like me" means. A professor of psychology is in many ways not like me but he might still contribute to developing the art of rationality.

Now, you can say, my approximation is false, which it is. LW influenced you, etc, so there is a correlation.

My argument doesn't rest on the fact that LW influenced me. The QS community is not the LW community even when it's no accident that I meet.

It is pretty shitty someone is down-voting you, you are just making a very common mistake of underestimating exponential growth. They could at least tell you what mistake did you make.

That's still the kind of passive aggressive communication that Jiro complained about.

ChristianKl comments on Ideas on growth of the community - Less Wrong

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