helldalgo comments on LessWrong 2.0 - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: helldalgo 03 December 2015 08:24:23AM *  12 points [-]

Less Wrong has a high barrier of entry if you're at all intimidated by math, idiosyncratic language, and the idea that ONE GUY has written most of its core content. I think the diaspora is good for mainstreaming the concepts on this site. I wish I had been an active member when it was still a catalyst for motion. The book's existence is good, and HPMoR will still bring people here. This site is important for archival and educational reasons.

Less Wrong might be in a good place to mature in several different directions. If other community members branch out in the way that CFAR and MIRI have, integrating the education-without-academia principles should be a priority in their organizations. It's not a stretch: Eliezer Yudkowsky does not have a degree, and he has done excellent work from a teaching point of view. He also seems to be respectable among academics for his theory work (I'm not knowledgeable enough to vet that personally).

Teaching people to use effective signaling of their competence, without resorting to Dark Arts, might be useful too.

I'm in favor of EA, but ingres is not wrong that embedding those principles could be off-putting. I don't know their personal reasons for feeling that way, but I know many people feel that utility-maximizing about human lives is "icky." To be more charitable, they believe that human life has inherent sacred properties. They also believe that assigning mathematical values to people signals that you're "cold." If someone comes to Less Wrong with those ideals, they have to a) digest a LOT of LW philosophy to be okay with EA principles, or b) stick around despite their distaste for certain core principles.

Comment author: VAuroch 06 December 2015 09:52:16PM 3 points [-]

Back when LW was more active, there was much lower math density in posts here.

Comment author: helldalgo 06 December 2015 10:42:39PM 2 points [-]

That's interesting.

There's also less math density on the rationalist blogs and the rationalist Tumblr-space, which at this point have much more current activity than LW.