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GabrielDuquette comments on A place for casual, non-karmic discussion for lesswrongers? - Less Wrong Discussion

19 [deleted] 04 November 2012 06:50PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 05 November 2012 05:27:23PM -2 points [-]

Following only a handful of low-noise feeds would not violate this rule. Are you unable to eat one cookie without eating the whole box?

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 05 November 2012 05:40:23PM 2 points [-]

How will it help? 140 characters is simply too short form for some kinds of posts.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 November 2012 05:42:27PM 0 points [-]

How will it help what? Which posts? Why?

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 06 November 2012 07:02:55PM *  0 points [-]

Well, maybe Rational_Brony wants to find posts with detailed explanation of some position/fact with a summary of corroborating evidence.

I'm a wordy person who likes to take it slow and read things leisurely

I treat that as preference for 1k-ish posts over ≤140-character posts.

On many forums posting a medium-length essay without too much polishing would be just "business as usual", on some other it would be "weird but OK". On Twitter it is declared impossible if you use it as supposed. You could use Twitter as an RSS-like stream for your blog, but leading conversation by linking blog posts with points and couterpoints doesn't seem to be widespread practice on Twitter.

EDIT: I answered before readng the entire thread; looks like I mostly guessed.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 November 2012 07:25:22PM 0 points [-]

Hmm. This thread is forcing me to think about what character limits actually do. Also how reader interaction changes as count increases. Also difference between solo reading at leisure of a text that's graven in stone and social reading of a text that's being written collaboratively in the moment. Also different rates of "in the moment" (LW speed vs. Twitter speed).

Comment author: [deleted] 05 November 2012 07:28:53PM 0 points [-]

That is indeed a terrible vice of mine. But see vi21maobk9vp (what kind of handle is that anyway?) for the other reason I find twitter unsatisfactory.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 November 2012 07:57:36PM *  0 points [-]

What's your answer to my questions about that reason?

Comment author: [deleted] 06 November 2012 10:21:48AM 1 point [-]

Help with the fact that, given how short twitter posts are, it is very difficult to talk about stuff at comfortable length. There isn't even the comfort of a linear or tree structure like in fora or reddits, and while you can stack them by topic you need to sacrifice characters to do so. You can link to longer posts in blogs and fora, but then why not talk there? Also, every time you post a link, it has to be tinyfied, which is a pain in the neck. And the briefness of the format forces to rely on tacit understanding and common priors, which oftentimes aren't there, so the risk of illusion of double transparency is very high. .

Comment author: [deleted] 06 November 2012 10:51:44AM *  0 points [-]

Bottom line for me: Twitter incentivizes good compression, vivid analogies, and a warmer, less standoffish atmosphere. Tacit understanding and common priors flourish in a less prescriptive environment if a certain root density can be established to prevent erosion -- which I'd argue has occurred within a certain cluster of feeds.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 November 2012 06:57:16PM 0 points [-]

You've lost me from "if" onwards. What's root density? Erosion?

Comment author: [deleted] 06 November 2012 07:15:31PM 0 points [-]

A bunch of people with good epistemic hygiene talking to each other; trusting each other enough to be really playful because the underlying agreement about how the world works is so strong.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 November 2012 08:04:50PM 0 points [-]

Got any recommendations? Also, how to avoid an echo chamber effect (which is already enough of a problem here on LW, I'm afraid)?

Comment author: [deleted] 06 November 2012 08:56:59PM *  0 points [-]

Echoes are fine if they're true. I think the rationalist memplex loves to break ideas, so the ones that stick around are pretty unbreakable.

Here's the full list. Some good ones (in terms of quantity/quality/responsiveness) are sark, Rob Sica, Sister Y, Catharine G. Evans, Elizabeth, S.T. Rev, metafroth, and Michael Blume.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 November 2012 11:35:08PM 0 points [-]

... I still find it kind of baffling.

And I didn't mean "echo chamber" in terms of ideas so much as in terms of habits, norms, etc. We're a rather different subculture, and it's really easy to lose track of how others thinks, a bias which may bite us in the ass later on.

Not that I understand normal people all that well, either, but huddling with my peers isn't going to help.