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Adele_L comments on Less Wrong’s political bias - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (352)
I think in general, people here are much too willing to take contrarian viewpoints. That is an interesting hypothesis, though.
I get what you mean by Less Wrong's willingness to take contrarian viewpoints. However, what you need to remember is that these viewpoints do not seem contrarian within the less Wrong community. Taking Cryonics seriously for example is considered normal here, even by those who don't attach a high probability to it working. And the reason for that is that Yudkowski has declared this view to be mainstream within Less Wrong. Similarly, Yudkowski has declared politics to be mind-killing, so that subject is off-limits. My issue with this is that in deciding what is and isn't "normal" or "up for debate", 90% of the debate has already been decided. And any post that disagrees gets downvoted to -6 and shut down, because "we don't talk about that around here."
Given this, I think I can see why Less Wrong has a reputation for group-think.
There is lots of political debate amongst lesswrongers "just around the corner" in various personal blogs and websites. So I'm not convinced the fact that it is taboo here is the cause.
I am not convinced either. I think my explanation is plausible, but it's certainly not the only plausible explanation. However, I certainly think it's important to pause and reflect about this.
I also think it's very worrisome that any posts criticizing Less Wrong get down voted (Unless you're Holden and you spend about 10 pages praising Less Wrong first and couch all criticism in disclaimers).
How confident are you that this is actually true?
Literally speaking not at all, since it was an exaggeration. 10 pages of praise is clearly not necessary.
That said, I strongly believe that posts containing criticism of Less Wrong on average get many more downvotes (and less upvotes) than posts which remark on how great Less Wrong is. For example, I have seen "joke" posts on how Yudkowski is god that get about +50 points (was a while ago, would need to check to confirm memory). On the other hand, every time I post a criticism of Less Wrong, it gets a lot of downvotes (though usually some upvotes as well), and as for criticism posted by other people.... well I don't see a lot of that, do you?
(nods) That's a far more defensible statement. It might even be true.
I'm not sure what you mean by "a lot". I've seen more criticism of LessWrong here than I've seen criticism of RationalWiki, for example, and less than I've seen criticism of the Catholic Church. More than I've seen criticism of Dan Dannett. I'm not sure if I've seen more criticism of Less Wrong than of Richard Dawkins, or less. What's your standard?
We could instead ask: should there be more of it? Should there be less? I suspect that's a wrong question as well though. Mostly, I think the criticism should be of higher quality. Most of what I see is tedious and redundant. Of course, Sturgeon's Law applies in this as in everything.
All of that said, if I were to list off the top of my head the top ten critics of LessWrong who post on LW , your name would not even come up, so if you are attempting to suggest that you are somehow the singular contrarian voice on this site I can only conclude that you haven't read much of the site's archives.
There is also more criticism of Less Wrong here than there is criticism of people who think that the world is run by lizard-people. This is because Less Wrong is more relevant to Less Wrong than Lizard-people, not because the lizard-believers are actually considered more credible.
The only reasonable standard to me is comparing the amount of criticism with the amount of praise. I see much more posts talking about how great Less Wrong is than I see criticism of Less Wrong. More worryingly, the criticism of Less Wrong that I do see is on other forums, where it is widely agreed that Less Wrong is subject to group think, but which is summarily ignored here.
I assume you aren't actually suggesting that RationalWiki, the Catholic Church, Dan Dannett and Richard Dawkins are as irrelevant to Less Wrong as lizard-people. I picked a few targets that seemed vaguely relevant; if you think I should pick different targets, let me know what they are.
Why is that? This doesn't seem true to me at all.
Why does this worry you?
This might be true. Can you unpack what you mean by "group think"? (Or what you think those other people on other forums whom you're reporting the statements of mean by it, if that's more relevant?)
No, I am saying that comparing criticism of Less Wrong with criticism of other websites/people is not a valid metric at all, since the total amount written on the subject differs between each. You can't look at absolute amounts of criticism here, it has to be relative or merely the total amount of posts would determine the answer.
It worries me that a lot of the criticism of Less Wrong is made outside of Less Wrong because this indicates that the criticism is not accepted here and Less Wrong exists in a bubble.
The exact criticism of Less Wrong usually isn't very good, since people tend to not spend a lot of time writing thoughtful criticisms of websites that they aren't affiliated with. It usually amounts to "gives off a bad vibe", "uses their own little language", "Copies Yudkowski in everything they believe" or "Disproportionally holds extreme views without thinking this is odd." All of this indicates what I call group think, which is the act of paying too much attention to what others in the in-group believe and being isolated from the rest of the world.
Maybe your criticisms of Less Wrong just aren't all that well-reasoned. Plenty of Less Wrong criticism gets upvoted here. The most-upvoted post of all time is a criticism of MIRI, and several of my own most-upvoted comments are direct criticisms of Eliezer, e.g. this and this. See also this much-upvoted post.
Thanks for the reply. When you suggest that maybe the problem is on my end, are you really just offering that as a mere possibility, or do you believe that that is actually the case? I'm asking because while it is of course entirely reasonable to say that the fault lies with me, nobody as of yet has told me what specifically is wrong with my posts (other than: "not enough facts", or: "You sound left-wing"). If the latter is the case, please tell me what specifically I could improve.
The first post you link to is the one by Holden that I specifically referred to above as the only type of criticism that does get upvoted. The reasons for this are varied:
1) Holden is high status: Nobody is going to tell Holden to shut up and go away (as I've been told to) because the mere fact that he is taking the MIRI seriously is good for the MIRI and Less Wrong.
2) Holden is exceedingly polite and says nothing that could even be taken as an excuse to be offended
3) Holden goes out of his way to praise Less Wrong as a community, which of course makes people here feel good.
4) Holden has spent a ridiculous amount of time and effort writing and supporting that exceedingly lengthy post, well beyond normal standards.
5) Holden doesn't actually say anything that is considered Taboo here on Less Wrong. His post defends the proposition that donating to MIRI isn't the best possible expenditure of money. That's hardly going to rile people up.
Holden's post is the equivalent of James Randi going to a dowser's forum, and writing a 10 page thesis on why he thinks dowsing isn't 100% effective, while repeatedly saying how he might be wrong, and he really wants to be able to change his mind, and isn't the idea of dowsing wonderful and aren't dowsers great people. Of course the dowsers would be very happy with a post like that: it only validates them to have something like James Randi say all that. This does NOT mean that dowsers are all rational individuals who are happy to receive criticism of their ideas.
The same point holds for your own posts criticizing Eliezer, albeit to a lesser extent. And again, criticizing Eliezer is not taboo here. Criticizing Less Wrong itself, more so.
I agree that Yudkowsky hero worship is extremely creepy and should stop.
Fair enough. What's the most recent example of Yudkowsky hero worship you've observed here?
No, what gets downvoted is when a newbie starts criticizing aspects of lesswrong in a way that indicates he has no clue what he's talking about.
I suspect that Adele_L means "contrarian within LW". There are vocal opponents of cryonics being a rational choice/investment, of many worlds being a "slam dunk", of UFAI being an x-risk and of other prevailing opinions here. When they present their arguments in a thoughtful manner, they don't necessarily get downvoted below the default visibility threshold.