= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
DanArmak comments on Is Less Wrong discouraging less nerdy people from participating? - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (58)
But to grasp those concepts we'd need to actually learn a lot of mostly-useless, occasionally-relevant facts.
When an LW post says Gandalf should have brought Frodo to Rivendell as soon as he suspected he had the One Ring, the whole point of using that example is that readers understand it. If the post had to explain who Gandalf was, there would be no benefit in mentioning Gandalf at all. If the post instead talked about a pop culture reference that most readers wouldn't get, the post's value would be lower.
Yes, but at the cost of making it less accessible to the average person. Yes, given that there are very few people who will click with LW who don't have our community's cultural knowledge, we should bias (across all posts, comments) toward sf/fantasy/science/tech/whatever, but there are other factors in play, which mean that the current mix is too far away from the mainstream. Given that we enjoy our culture, we should expect that we overuse it, approve of it out of proportion to its worth, even given that our enjoyment of it is a reason to use it, approve of it.
I understand that. I'm not saying that using mainstream references is wrong. But it does require the existing readers and posters to give some personal utility from using LW in exchange for the (impersonal) benefit of LW achieving its goals better.
Well, sure. And I'm sure the community would appreciate suggestions on how to make doing so less expensive/more possible.