Open Thread April 4 - April 10, 2016

Elo

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

Besides the triviality of everything having a beginning, a developement and an end, I found that the model is too simplicistic and already shows some crack when applied to LessWrong:

pre-existing difference: about LW there was only one man, Eliezer, who perceived the difference between what he considered a sane approach to AI and all the others approach;
then it came a blog about showing this approach and "raising the sanity waterline", which I think created the difference in many of his followers, or at least attracted enough interest. In this case, the rallying flag created the difference in those who attended, which in turn created (or smoothed) more differences;
developement and end are mixed in this case, there was supposedly a peak and a denouement, but the site is still active, the tribe has fragmented and regrouped again.

then it came a blog about showing this approach and "raising the sanity waterline", which I think created the difference in many of his followers

That is... a very strong statement. You think that EY's blog actually created the differences in the people who then coalesced into a tribe around their creator?

and regrouped again

What do you count as regrouping?

1gjm10y

But the LW community was not really, in the first instance, built around Eliezer's (or anyone's) ideas about how to approach AI. It was built around his ideas about how to think rationally, and a lot of that existed before Eliezer wrote anything on the subject. (I am not making claims about the originality or unoriginality of Eliezer's writings about rationality. The point, with which I am absolutely sure he would agree, is that much of the difference between a typical LW rationalist and a typical non-rationalist lies in things that Eliezer did not invent and was not the first to write down.)