Having big brother looming over the shoulder specifying what you may think makes it work instead of fun.
I do not really get this reaction. So what if Eliezer has a tendency to over-censor? I was once banned completely from a mailing list but it didn't make me terribly upset or lose interest in the subject matter of the list. The Roko thing seems even less of a big deal. (I thought Roko ended up agreeing that it was a mistake to make the post. He could always post it elsewhere if he doesn't agree. It's not as if Eliezer has control over the whole Internet.)
And not work that I have any particular comparative advantage in! (I can actually remember thinking to myself "folks like Wei Dai are more qualified to tackle these sort of things efficiently, given their prior intellectual investments".
I didn't think I had any particular advantage when I first started down this path either. I began with what I thought was just fun little puzzle in an otherwise well-developed area, which nobody else was trying to solve because they didn't notice it as a problem yet. So, I'm a bit weary about presenting "a list of really hard and important problems" and scaring people away. (Of course I may be scaring people away just through this discussion, but probably only a minority of LWers are listening to us.)
I second cousin_it's interest in your aforementioned post! It would actually be good to know which problems are not solved as opposed to which problems I just don't know the solution to. Or, for that matter, which problems I think I know the solution to but really don't.
I guess another factor is that I have the expectation that if someone is really interested in this stuff (i.e., have a "burning need to know"), they would already have figured out which problems are not solved as opposed to which problems they just don't know the solution to, because they would have tried every available method to find existing solutions to these problems. It seems unlikely that they'd have enough motivation to make much progress if they didn't have at least that level of interest.
So I've been trying to figure out (without much success) how to instill this kind of interest in others, and again, I'm not sure presenting a list of important unsolved problems is the best way to do it.
I guess another factor is that I have the expectation that if someone is really interested in this stuff (i.e., have a "burning need to know"), they would already have figured out which problems are not solved as opposed to which problems they just don't know the solution to, because they would have tried every available method to find existing solutions to these problems.
Discussing things that are already known can help in understanding them better. Also, the "burning need to know" occasionally needs to be ignited, or directed. I do...
More and more, LessWrong's posts are meta-rationality posts, about how to be rational, how to avoid akrasia, in general, without any specific application. This is probably the intended purpose of the site. But they're starting to bore me.
What drew me to LessWrong is that it's a place where I can put rationality into practice, discussing specific questions of philosophy, value, and possible futures, with the goal of finding a good path through the Singularity. Many of these topics have no other place where rational discussion of them is possible, online or off. Such applied topics have almost all moved to Discussion now, and may be declining in frequency.
This isn't entirely new. Applied discussions have always suffered bad karma on LW (statistically; please do not respond with anecdotal data). I thought this was because people downvote a post if they find anything in it that they disagree with. But perhaps a lot of people would rather talk about rationality than use it.
Does anyone else have this perception? Or am I just becoming a LW old geezer?
At the same time, LW is taking off in terms of meetups and number of posts. Is it finding its true self? Does the discussion of rationality techniques have a larger market than debates over Sleeping Beauty (I'm even beginning to miss those!) Is the old concern with values, artificial intelligence, and the Singularity something for LW to grow out of?
(ADDED: Some rationality posts are good. I am also a lukeprog fan.)