Epiphany

A new TED talk video just came out by Daniel Suarez, author of Daemon, explaining how autonomous combat drones with a capability called "lethal autonomy" pose a threat to democracy. Lethal autonomy is what it sounds like - the ability of a robot to kill a human without requiring a...

Various people raised concerns that growth might ruin the culture after reading my "LessWrong could grow a lot" thread. There has been some discussion about whether endless September, a phenomenon that kills online discussion groups, is a significant threat to LessWrong and what can be done. I really care about...

I heard that women are difficult to convince when it comes to signing up for cryo. In mentioning cryonics to a dying person, there seems to be a consensus that it's not going to happen. I encountered a post: Years saved: Cryonics vs VillageReach, which addressed my main objection (that...

Note: After writing this post, I realized there's a lot I need to learn about this subject. I've been thinking a lot about how I use the word "elitism" and what it meant to me. I was unaware that there are a large number of people who use the word...

As you are probably already aware, many internet forums experience a phenomenon known as "eternal September". Named after a temporary effect where the influx of college freshmen would throw off a group's culture every September, eternal September is essentially what happens when standards of discourse and behavior degrade in a...

In the thread "LessWrong could grow a lot, but we're doing it wrong.", I explained why LessWrong has the potential to grow quite a lot faster in my opinion, and volunteered to help LessWrong grow. Of course, a lot of people were concerned about the fact that a large quantity...

How do I know this? I got a copy of the website analytics. The bounce rate for LessWrong's home page is 60%! To be clear: Over half the people who visit LessWrong are going away without even clicking anything. Yet how many NEW visitors are there? Almost half of the...