I think this section conflates two things: 1) the role LW used to play, and 2) the role ultimate-Arbital will play.
I think 1 is a subset of 2.
In particular, I don't think LW had solved the problem you describe here: "If someone wants to catch up on the state of the debate, they either need to get a summary from someone, figure it out as they go along, or catch up by reading the entire discussion."
Perhaps this could be all in a note, with the only default-viewable thing saying we're financially stable? Unsure about this one, but my guess is the average reader does not care about the details too much.
The current note feels kinda startup-pitchy, which is probably not a good look here.
I'd lean towards mostly positives / integrating these two, rather than just negatives we want to avoid (not pure positive either though). Perhaps emphasize that we want a system where the staff are helpful and approachable? And where new people with valuable input are rapidly recognized and their ideas shown to more people?
I'd add a once sentence "this is what it is / why it matters" thing. Perhaps something about efficiently bringing people to to the edge of human understanding?
Something more humble will probably work better, "hope" is a good word here. Deprecated -> archived ? And we'd probably want to bulk-import including comments before stepping up as official replacement ("good content" is questionable PR), the work will be in hooking up the sequences and similar to Arbital's nav features.
eventual and unilateral don't really fit, and this sentence does not really make sense in general. Community building is hard because humans are messy systems with all sorts of behavioral patterns and complex interactions, not because we need mass adoption. Also, mass readership and mass community involvement are pretty different, we can do okay with a smallish community of awesome people if they're working well.
Is there any part of Arbital we can put as "hey, want to make this part?" so the community can help push this forward (an external prediction market for bayes points with an API we can use?)? If yes or maybe, maybe saying we're looking into ways to harness devs who want to help out part time?
No. My intention there wasn't to ask for help, and in fact, I'd prefer to be clear that we don't need outside help. Right now we are in no position to absorb it well. Perhaps that part should be rewritten?
I'd really want to tell this not as a whole new vision, but as moving onto a different part of an existing vision. We did already have plans for discussion, and the grand experiment to improve human knowledge exchange was there.
I'd tell this story fairly differently. This is not really how I saw math, and presenting it as not-a-failure is pretty important PR-wise. We do have a really good amount of math content, and want to talk about it as a place we got to test out our wiki features and get valuable feedback in a non-controversial domain before moving on to building other parts.
Hits good points, but awkwardly structured / worded in a few places. I can fix, but would reorganize/rewrite a bunch.
Also worth considering quoting or summarizing one core paragraph, for people who have not read it or want a refresher. Load the things into readers heads :)
Oh, and the greenlink to her post wants a summary.
Needs some cushioning, to avoid setting expectations of not just powerful dictator-staff and arrogant experts. Something showing we want the higher ups to be helpful and awesome, not just powerful and able to suppress bad things.
The structuring feels fairly awkward, I'd rewrite with high-value of X changed to something more human-friendly, and naturally integrated with examples.
First use of "we" should indicate who "we" are, e.g. "We at Arbital..."
Overall, I think the post covers most of the important points, but I think I'd want to cut some parts.
I'll try making an outline of what I think the key points are.
I might rephrase this to, "initial target" so it's clear that it was intended as a step along the path, not that it was our entire vision.
I think this section conflates two things: 1) the role LW used to play, and 2) the role ultimate-Arbital will play.
I think 1 is a subset of 2.
In particular, I don't think LW had solved the problem you describe here: "If someone wants to catch up on the state of the debate, they either need to get a summary from someone, figure it out as they go along, or catch up by reading the entire discussion."
soften, perhaps talk about encouraging good epistemic norms, give details/examples so people don't get scared? no enforcement or require.
Perhaps this could be all in a note, with the only default-viewable thing saying we're financially stable? Unsure about this one, but my guess is the average reader does not care about the details too much.
The current note feels kinda startup-pitchy, which is probably not a good look here.
Repetition of scope in the note is mildly awkward.
I'd lean towards mostly positives / integrating these two, rather than just negatives we want to avoid (not pure positive either though). Perhaps emphasize that we want a system where the staff are helpful and approachable? And where new people with valuable input are rapidly recognized and their ideas shown to more people?
I'd add a once sentence "this is what it is / why it matters" thing. Perhaps something about efficiently bringing people to to the edge of human understanding?
Discussions should be taggable with multiple domains, so the one place seems not quite right. Keep up with all discussion in any topic?
soften or remove, especially the word dictate. facilitate perhaps?
Links to examples would go great here.
kinda awkwardly worded, could pack more of a punch with some optimization.
Seems ill-fitting with the others, I'd drop this entirely. I doubt anyone who would aggressively exploit bugs will be swayed by it.
Encourage, not demand :), and maybe link to a blog post about why betting is good too?
Something more humble will probably work better, "hope" is a good word here. Deprecated -> archived ? And we'd probably want to bulk-import including comments before stepping up as official replacement ("good content" is questionable PR), the work will be in hooking up the sequences and similar to Arbital's nav features.
eventual and unilateral don't really fit, and this sentence does not really make sense in general. Community building is hard because humans are messy systems with all sorts of behavioral patterns and complex interactions, not because we need mass adoption. Also, mass readership and mass community involvement are pretty different, we can do okay with a smallish community of awesome people if they're working well.
In both the notes, "recent pivot", I'd avoid pivot framing, to go with the whole "we're building the next part" thing.
Also, the framing of "the final decisions are made by the core team" sounds vaguely power / conflict-y, I'd suggest something more gentle.
And mention Nate as a previous adviser?
Is there any part of Arbital we can put as "hey, want to make this part?" so the community can help push this forward (an external prediction market for bayes points with an API we can use?)? If yes or maybe, maybe saying we're looking into ways to harness devs who want to help out part time?
Perhaps, it currently feels ambiguous as to whether you're looking to use volunteers, or just saying you've got a good hiring pool.
No. My intention there wasn't to ask for help, and in fact, I'd prefer to be clear that we don't need outside help. Right now we are in no position to absorb it well. Perhaps that part should be rewritten?
I'd really want to tell this not as a whole new vision, but as moving onto a different part of an existing vision. We did already have plans for discussion, and the grand experiment to improve human knowledge exchange was there.
I'd tell this story fairly differently. This is not really how I saw math, and presenting it as not-a-failure is pretty important PR-wise. We do have a really good amount of math content, and want to talk about it as a place we got to test out our wiki features and get valuable feedback in a non-controversial domain before moving on to building other parts.
awkwardish, probably best drop functional, and maybe use network of knowledge rather than database?
Hits good points, but awkwardly structured / worded in a few places. I can fix, but would reorganize/rewrite a bunch.
Also worth considering quoting or summarizing one core paragraph, for people who have not read it or want a refresher. Load the things into readers heads :)
Oh, and the greenlink to her post wants a summary.
Needs some cushioning, to avoid setting expectations of not just powerful dictator-staff and arrogant experts. Something showing we want the higher ups to be helpful and awesome, not just powerful and able to suppress bad things.
The structuring feels fairly awkward, I'd rewrite with high-value of X changed to something more human-friendly, and naturally integrated with examples.