I think it'd be a good idea to keep a list of the ways we'd like to see LessWrong improve, sorted by popularity. Ie. email alerts for new responses.
So if you have an idea for how LessWrong could be better, post it in the comments. As people up/downvote, we'll get a sense for what the consensus opinions are.
I think there's a pretty good amount to be gained by improving LessWrong.
- I think there's a lot of low-hanging fruit (like email alerts for new responses).
- Conversations here are actually useful and productive. Facilitating conversation should thus lead to more of these useful and productive conversations (as opposed to leading to more of an unproductive type of conversation). (Sorry, I didn't word this well; hopefully you guys know what I mean.)
- Perhaps something big would come out of this list (like meet-ups). Perhaps rationality hack-a-thons (whatever that means)?
Note: I say "ways to improve" instead of "features" because "ways to improve" is more general.
Really? There the common sentiment that before evidence-based medicine going to the doctor was more harmful to your health then simply avoiding the doctor. Pre-1906 Western medicine was very bad.
We could change the present system so that you are allowed to sell drugs that aren't FDA approved but if anybody who takes the drug has any problem with it they can sue you for malpratice worth millions of collars. I don't think that would be an improvement over the existing system.
For a company it's very valuable to be able to simply comply with an existing standard instead of regulations and then be able to say in front of a court: "Look, we did what the official regulations say." Instead of being dependent on guesses what a jury will think. A jury that probably doesn't understand the evidence base very well and that's not able to run their own studies the way the FDA can.
Legal uncertainty is bad for business.