ChristianKl comments on LessWrong 2.0 - Less Wrong

89 Post author: Vaniver 09 December 2015 06:59PM

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Comment author: jkaufman 03 December 2015 10:44:15AM *  6 points [-]

At the same time, given the implied privacy of Facebook I have to wonder if the point of posting there is so that things will not be read outside of the small audience EY now caters to.

I think this isn't a big factor. Instead people post to fb because:

  • low thresholds: it's socially acceptable to post anything from am odd thought you had to a big essay, and there's no expectation you polish your post or get friends to review drafts

  • positive comments: over the years comments on LW have gotten more and more critical, not clear why

  • blocking people: if there's someone who really annoys you but is well behaved enough that they meet site rules you can't ban them on LW but you can still block them on FB so you don't have to interact with them.

What keeps you off fb? I find some of my best discussions happen there these days.

Comment author: gjm 03 December 2015 12:40:01PM 31 points [-]

(I am not ingres even though I am asking a question you asked them.)

I don't like Facebook as a venue for such things because:

  • It is a walled garden; in general material on FB is not visible in web searches and can't be linked to directly.
    • I think some categories of public post on FB are linkable and searchable, but I'm not sure exactly what, and I suspect comments on linkable-searchable-things are not themselves linkable and searchable, and (see the next point) I have no reason to think that what's linkable and searchable now will remain so in the future.
  • Anything on Facebook could disappear, or become less accessible in some other way, or become surrounded by billions of annoying advertisements, at Facebook's whim, and nothing I know about Facebook makes me think such outcomes are terribly unlikely.
  • I have to assume that anything I do on Facebook is being tracked and machine-learning-ified by Facebook. I don't see any super-obvious actual problem with FB knowing that I talk about things with rationalists, but on general principles I want as little as possible to be visible to Facebook.
  • I have to assume that anything I do on Facebook is going to be shown to everyone I am "friends" with on Facebook. Again, it's not going to be news to any of them that I talk about things with rationalists, but again I have no particular wish to advertise everything I do to everyone I know.
  • Any time I am on Facebook, I am bombarded with social fluff. I value the social fluff a lot (otherwise I wouldn't be using Facebook at all), but I don't want it in my face when I'm trying to have a discussion about AI safety or effective altruism or any of the other at-least-one-notch-more-intellectual things that come up on LW.
  • I do not want to contribute to Facebook's increasing domination of the web. I use it for social networking because really there's no alternative, but the less support I can give to the facebookification of the internet the happier I shall be.
  • Some people (for reasons resembling the above, or other reasons of their own) don't use Facebook at all, and I think it's very unfortunate for them to be excluded from discussion.
Comment author: ChristianKl 03 December 2015 05:35:18PM 3 points [-]

I have to assume that anything I do on Facebook is going to be shown to everyone I am "friends" with on Facebook. Again, it's not going to be news to any of them that I talk about things with rationalists, but again I have no particular wish to advertise everything I do to everyone I know.

I think there real value in having discussion about rationality in a way where friends who aren't rationalists come to see them. It does limit the amount of jargon that you can use, but it has real benefits.

Comment author: gjm 03 December 2015 05:59:04PM 5 points [-]

Yup, but there is also value in having discussion about rationality that doesn't need to take such things into consideration.

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