You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

moridinamael comments on Open Thread, May 5 - 11, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: Tenoke 05 May 2014 10:35AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (284)
Tags: open_thread

Comments (284)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Brillyant 07 May 2014 02:21:50PM *  26 points [-]

Is Less Wrong dying?

Some observations...

  • The top level posts are generally well below the quality of early material, including the sequences, in my estimation.
  • 'Main' posts are rarely even vaguely interesting to me anymore.
  • 'Top Contributors' karma values seem very low compared to what I remember them being ~9-12 months ago.
  • 'Discussion' posts are littered with Meetup reminders.

About all I look at on LW anymore is the Open Discussion Thread, Rationality Quotes and the link to Slate Star Codex. I noticed CFAR and MIRI's websites gave me the impression they were getting more traction and perhaps making some money.

Has LW run it's course?

Comment author: moridinamael 07 May 2014 04:28:43PM 6 points [-]

I would say LW is evolving.

The Sequences are and always were the finger that points at the objective, not the objective unto itself. The project of LW is "refining the art of human rationality." But we don't have the defininition of human rationality written on stone tablets, needing only diligence in application to obtain good results. The project of LW is thus a dynamic process of discovery, experimentation, incorporating new data, sometimes backtracking when we update on evidence that isn't as solid was we had thought.

You correctly observe that the style of participation has changed over time. This is probably mostly the result of certain specific high volume contributors moving on to other things. It could also be the result of an aggregated shift in understanding as to what kinds of results can actually be produced by discussing rationality in a vacuum, which may perhaps be why these contributors have moved on. Or maybe they just said all they felt they needed to say, I don't know. I have a 101.1 F fever right now.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit