I think Less Wrong has an abnormally high percentage of lurkers because if participating at any web site is intimidating, participating at Less Wrong is especially intimidating because of the high level of discourse and English linguistic proficiency.
For the strictest definition of lurker, if you have registered for an account you are not or are not longer a lurker, but the definition is really not important.
Also, the karma system adds an additional barrier, at least in my mind. Knowing that your comment is going to be explicitly judged and your score added to a "permanent record" can be intimidating.
If you haven't already, do check out Eby's Instant Irresistible Motivation video for learning how to create positive motivation.
Interesting. In fact, it seems to mesh with the process I've successfully used to do things like cleaning my desk.
Unfortunately, many of the tasks I have to do don't lend themselves to the visualization in step 1. How does one visualize having studied for an exam, or completed an exercise routine?
It's very hard to compare one example of genocide to another, particularly when you are comparing events that occurred in different eras. As the genocides of the 20th century proved, technology changes the game by making it easier to commit systematic mass murder. Therefore, comparing body counts or even the frequency of mass slaughter doesn't truly compare two ideologies.
technology changes the game by making it easier to commit systematic mass murder.
Not to mention the simple expedient of having more people around.
I would say that Gall's Law is about the design capacities of human beings (like Dunbar's Number), or is something like "there's a threshold to how much new complexity you can design and expect to work", with the amount of complexity being different for humans, superintelligent aliens, chimps, or Mother Nature.
(the limit is particularly low fo Mother Nature - she makes smaller steps, but got to make much more of them)
That's not my point. My point is that Gall's law is unfalsifiable by anything short of Omega converting its entire light cone into computronium/utilium in a single, plank-time step.
Edit: Not to say that Gall's Law can't be useful to keep in mind during engineering design.
Deleated as a repeat.
Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.
WIlliam Thomson, Lord Kelvin
I'm not sure.
Isn't the first rocket or airplane also built on simple technologies?
I'm not saying that the first rocket and first airplane falsified Gall's Law. I'm saying that, had the space shuttle, in the form in which it was actually built, been the first rocket or the first airplane, it would have falsified Gall's Law.
Suppose a hyperintelligent alien race did build a space shuttle equivalent as their first space-capable craft, and then went on to build interplanetary and interstellar craft.
Alien 1: The [interstellar craft, driven by multiple methods of propulsion and myriad components] disproves Gall's Law.
Alien 2: Not at all. [Craft] is a simple extension of well-developed principles like the space shuttle and the light sail.
You can simply define a "working simple system" as whatever you can make work, making that a pure tautology.
I wonder if anyone else is reading this...
You should probably make an explicit karma balance post for this.
Surely having accurate positive self-beliefs is a win over having inaccurate positive self-beliefs, even if having inaccurate positive self-beliefs is a loss compared to having accurate negative self-beliefs. I don't suggest that you should become luminous enough to say, "Wow, I suck in the following ways!" and then quit.
I think the idea is to have both accurate and inaccurate positive self-beliefs, and no negative self-beliefs, accurate or otherwise.
Whether this is desirable or even possible I take no stance.
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Whether we like it or not, that "intimidation" may be the single most important factor in keeping the level of discourse in the comments unusually high. Status games can be beneficial.
Indeed. I'm not saying the karma system is a bad thing.