I was stumblin and I found this article, which I think graphically does a great job of making a similar point (although that point wasn't its explicit intention).

All of the graphs except 'tautology' limit the number of worlds you could be in.

Is this just technophobia? Or am I missing something, and this really is a horrible, evil technology that should be avoided at all costs? [That's a rhetorical question -- I'd be surprised if even one LWian held that position]

You seem to underrate the amount of contra-contrasrism on Lesswrong. For most subjects you will find someone on Lesswrong that can take the other side of the debate.

I guess what I'm asking is, what are the psychological roots for the almost-unanimous aversion to this attempt at gathering and using information about what people want?

Take a look at the discussion about Transcendence. You will find a sentiment that a film isn't supposed to be judged by the amount of fun that reader have in the cinema but that the film is supposed to be judged on the way it frames the societal debate.

Pop culture is culture that optimised on short-term enjoyment and pleasing the audience. Serious fiction is supposed to be optimised for more noble goals.

Effective technology that focuses on giving people what they want by looking at what people read is technology that engages in what we label on Lesswrong as "wireheading".

Ugly things happen when you start to pay all journalists by the click instead of focusing on accurate reporting.

Nassim Taleb said on the subject: "Truck driver who read books don't want to read books that are written for truck drivers."

I haven't yet seen anyone else point out that space and time look like a simple generalization of discrete causal graphs to continuous metrics of relatedness and determination, with c being the generalization of locality.

Yeah, this is one of the most profound things I've ever read. This is a RIDICULOUSLY good post.

I think you are wrong in saying that no one claims benefits from it: claiming benefits is practically all the linked article does. (BTW, your link goes to page two of the article. You may want to fix that. [Edit: Fixed.])

The article gave one viewpoint (and left out the other), and so everyone else is trying to give the counterpoint. (Not that I'm saying it's wrong for the article to only give one side: maybe debates work better for transmitting information than balanced pieces. But it certainly is the correct response to try to steelman the other viewpoint when you see an article in favour of one side.)

In addition to ygert's good comment I want to mentioned that maybe there is a status thing involved too. Maybe you noticed that in the natural sciences and in engineering there is the meme that something is either mathematical or not worth doing. A more extreme form is to see themselves as the most important workers in the world. Ackknowledging that, yes, studying literature to learn what makes a great piece of literature just like studying engineering to learn what makes a great bridge is a worthwhile and valuable endaveour, will hurt their status in the hacker community. Just go to a site like reddit and see how English majors are bashed on by engineering majors.

I am guilty myself of hating the humanities. Until the exact day I realised what the subject is about and that studying at college does not have to be a purely economic decision.

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Not sure about how the system works, just started using it yesterday, so I hope I will not bring doom to the whole party.

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You and I were talking about this in IRC. I remember expressing a concern about HabitRPG that, while it does genuinely motivate me at the moment, I'm not sure what's going to happen when it ends: when I've upgraded all my items, when I've collected all the pets, etc etc. If I just start over, the new game will likely motivate me significantly less than the first time around. And more than likely I just plain won't want to start over.

I've been trying to think of ways around this gamification problem, because it plays a part in nearly every attempt at gamification I've seen. I think that, for one aspect of gamification -- motivating yourself to learn new things -- there is a way that at least sort of overcomes the 'what happens when it ends?' problem:

Skill Trees. Like This . Maybe a website, or application, that starts with just the bare-bones code for creating skill trees, and you can create an account and add a skill tree to your account from a list of existing searchable skill trees, or you can create your own skill tree if you can't find one that's appropriate for you and that will allow other people with similar goals to add your skill tree system to their account, etc.