If you feel free speech is threatened, then you have bigger problems to worry about.
Inconvenience of disagreement
Only weak-willed people are afraid of disagreement. In a self-respecting community, you can say “you’re wrong, here’s 11 reasons why: [1] [2] [3]”.
Dark knowledge
Unless you’re running the simulation, I doubt you’d be the only one to know that. I’d actually advise you to tell about it so it will be properly dealt with.
Signaling: Seriously, would you discuss your affiliation to LW in a job interview?!
Terrible example, it has no relevance to a job interview.
Or tell your friends that you are afraid we live in a simulation? (If you don’t see my point, your rationality is totally off base, see the next point).
That’s what friends are for.
LW user “Timtyler” commented before: “I also found myself wondering why people remained puzzled about the high observed levels of disagreement. It seems obvious to me that people are poor approximations of truth-seeking agents—and instead promote their own interests. If you understand that, then the existence of many real-world disagreements is explained: people disagree in order to manipulate the opinions and actions of others for their own benefit.”
Zero-sum.
WEIRD-M-LW: It is a known problem that articles on LW are going to be written by authors that are in the overwhelming majority western,[1] educated,[2] industrialized,[3] rich,[4] democratic,[5] and male.[6]
So? (what of being western is of importance?)
No fools in my garden. (Well-kept gardens die by pacifism)
Sorry folks, internet only. No “The LessWrong Times” available. (By no fault of our own)
By third-world comparisons, yes. Otherwise, I doubt it. Provide an example. (Or pledge 50% of your richness to GiveWell)
I’ve never seen a discussion about this, so no comment. (Mind linking to one?)
Men are far more interested in stuff like this. This is no category and in fact I doubt women won’t be included should they want to. (If women are ‘turned off’ by the discussion here, and therefore choose not to participate, then they both don’t have to, and the inverse would be true for me and probably a significant amount of men too)
The LW surveys show distinctly that there are most likely many further attributes in which the population on LW differs from the rest of the world.
Well, that’s pretty much a given. That’s not a bad thing, and if it’s a good thing is debateable.
LW user “Jpet” argued in a comment very nicely: “But assuming that the other party is in fact totally rational is just silly. We know we’re talking to other flawed human beings, and either or both of us might just be totally off base, even if we’re hanging around on a rationality discussion board.”
In case the user is inactive: I have no idea what he meant. Not everyone is rational or being 100% effective or whatever. The last sentence feels like a LW-complete sanity test, and a very scary one by it’s implications of the userbase being completely off-base with reality.
LW could certainly use more diversity.
I’m sure people would oppose more people like me. Leaving me aside, “diversity” seems like an ideal that I’m not sure what it actually implies. Let’s add women, and people of colour, and some monkeys and jackdaws. That’s just my silly recommendations though. What do you imply by “diversity” that LW is lacking, and why is it important to be included?
Personal anecdote: I was dumbfounded by the current discussion around LW T-shirts sporting slogans such as “Growing Mentally Stronger” which seemed to me intuitively highly counterproductive.
Me too. I think they’re silly.
(Crocker’s warning)
You mean trigger warning.
Genes, minds, hormones & personal history: (Even) rational agents are highly influenced by those factors.
Correct, but you still need to infinitely recurse.
Priorities
Agreed. I’d put other stuff on the list, but it would derail this post well past oblivion.
Other beliefs/goals
Then what is the point of the previously mentioned diversity? To me it looks like a contradiction and admittance that it’s not a very utility-generating ideal.
Vanity: Considering the amount of self-help threads, nerdiness, and alike on LW, it may be suspected that some refrain from posting due to self-respect.
Yeah, the high school jock cliche won’t like it. Can’t disagree with you about the cheerleaders, though.
E.g. I do not want to signal myself that I belong to this tribe.
You’ve already made a point I agreed with on rationality T-shirts being silly, there’s no reason to implement a mildly different form of it that accomplishes the same thing.
This may sound outlandish but then again, have a look at the Facebook groups of LW and other rationalists where people ask frequently how they can be more interesting, or how “they can train how to pause for two seconds before they speak to increase their charisma.” Again, if this sounds perfectly fine to you, that may be bad news.
No, it’s only bad news to you. People who recognize weak aspects of them and try to self-improve should be applauded. You are, as far as I am concerned, dragging humanity down. Now tell me where you keep those un-traceable rifles. (The examples are admittedly silly but they’re mere examples)
(A note of importance to me is what they consider ‘interesting’, and why. Are they trying to appeal to a different group?)
Barriers to entry
Agreed, but on the other hand, those talking about that are probably fify books or so ahead of you. I don’t participate in the AI department and don’t plan to. On the other hand, there’s plenty of topics where LW could theoretically help, but they appear less commonly and there’s less people who can help with them.
There’s also the issue of specialization: the more specialized a topic, the more you need to know about it. Highly specialized topics shouldn’t be confused with a high entry barrier.
Nothing new under the sun
Too many places suffer from this to one degree or another, but unless the community bands together (LW wiki?) and makes those ‘already posted’ stuff easy to access so it won’t be reposted.
Maybe a bunch of AI researchers can make something that goes through text and tells the user “this might have been already posted”. And hopefully it won’t destroy the world while it’s at it, too.
Error
Once again, infinite recursion.
Protection of the group: Opinions though being important may not be discussed to protect the group or its image to outsiders.
Such as? You don’t need to publicy discuss EVERYTHING, either.
See “is LW a *” and *’ *.”
Unless a community has no merit, you can take the good stuff with you and leave the rest.
I heard that’s bad for you and you shouldn’t mention it. That correlates with the first one, amusingly enough.
This argument can also be brought forward much more subtle: an agent may, for example, hold the opinion that rationality concepts are information hazards by nature if they reduce the happiness of the otherwise blissfully unaware.
Live your life as you see fit.
However, said agent must first research happiness thoroughly before making such a statement. There’s also individual reactions, but that’s getting too precise for my calculations.
Topicality
That happens to everything, eventually. Overlaps with my aforementioned specialization.
This is a community-only thing, though. People can develop and have different experiences and the next best thing to do is what we can take from LW and how we can apply it in our life.
Russell’s antinomy: Is the contribution that states its futility ever expressed? Random example article title: “Writing articles on LW is useless because only nerds will read them.”
Best thing I can say is: maybe people like it? Maybe they want to write something. Why not let them? So what if only nerds read it.
There’s an insulting, “what-if” that assumes it’s not only correct but also unquestionable and any deviation from it should be punished with a smack on your head in that title.
+Redundancy:
If we’ve become redundant on the topic of rationality, then it’s time to stop milking the cow and start using it in our life. This is the real rationality test; the real freakin’ deal.
Everything below that list is excellent and I don’t regret taking a reading break for this just because of that.
By third-world comparisons, yes. Otherwise, I doubt it. Provide an example. (Or pledge 50% of your richness to GiveWell)
Unless the third world includes the United States outside of the Bay Area and New England (which, judging by the term “fly-over country”, it probably does in lots of minds), then yes, LWers talking about attending CFAR’s $3000 workshops and traveling all over the place and how they’re already working for a big software giant and talked their bosses into giving them a raise are signs of being toward the higher end of the American Middle Class, if not higher. Just having so many programmers and the occasional psychiatrist is enough to put LW into the “rich even by first world standards” category.
This has come up before. Some LWer who is not rich points out that LWers are on average pretty dang rich, and most everyone goes “surely not! Just abandon everything you have and move to Silicon Valley with the money you don’t have and surely you’ll get a programming job, and realize how not-rich we are!” *
I am not trying to signal tribal affiliation when I say that LW unintentionally taught me to appreciate the whole “check your privilege” concept.
Having said all that, there are a few people who aren’t financially successful STEM lords around here. It’s just that they are decidedly not the majority of dominant voices.
* The first and last phrases might be a bit uncharitable, but the reaction is generally disbelief, in spite of the fact that LWers do seem to have thousands of dollars whenever they need them. Just a couple days ago, someone on Facebook was trying to get someone to go with him on a trip to Indiana, so they could split the gas money, but he realized he really needed to spend that money elsewhere. I’ve had reasonably middle-class people on Facebook trying to come up with someplace to stay, asking for donations for emergencies, saying how they wish they could justify spending money on things far cheaper than a new computer… and all of them are financially and socially way better off than me.
I conclude from the discussion that the term “rich” is too vague. The following is mine: I should be surprised to find many LWers who don’t find themselves in the top percentage of the Global Richlist and who could not afford cryonics if they made it their lives’ goal.
It looks like MOST of the descriptions people are using for “richness” are pretty vague, which I find to be weird since we actually have readily available numbers.
Median US individual income is $26,695 . Unless you want to claim that half of Americans are “poor” or lower class, you should probably start your middle class no lower than that.
(ETA: For a full-time worker over the age of 25 it’s $39k, so you could maybe push it up to that, but it disregards a lot of people who are stuck in part time jobs, or are kept working at just below full time so that they don’t have to be given benefits)
10%ers start at $82k. I think it would be silly to say someone in the top 10% of US earners isn’t rich. Almost all STEM LWers I’ve met either make well above this, or work for a non-profit.
I conclude from the discussion that the term “rich” is too vague.
Not that I suggest that everyone adopt these definitions, but I usually use these words in the following meaning:
Rich—“financially independent”, you don’t have to work if you don’t want to and still have at least upper-middle-class lifestyle.
Upper-middle—not worry about money too much, it’s sufficient for comfortable and socially adequate lifestyle, but you need a high-paying job and can’t really afford expensive extravagances.
Middle—money is kinda OK, you can afford all the necessities and some (but not many) luxuries.
Lower-middle—money is tight, you can afford most necessities, but few if any luxuries
Lower—Paycheck to paycheck (if you have a job), no reserves, any crisis can thoroughly screw you up.
There are three different variables: income, consumption, and wealth, which confuse any discussion of economic class. Someone who is high-income, high-consumption, and low-wealth is probably working >40 hours a week at a professional job and worried about money, but also might be driving a fancy car and living in an expensive house.
In terms of life satisfaction, I get the sense that the primary variable that matters is wealth, but in terms of social status (for most groups), the primary variable that matters is consumption.
All true, but I wasn’t trying to construct some sort of a comprehensive social stratification scheme. It’s really just a quick list of what I mean when I’m using certain words.
The context was the famous observation that subjects of psychological studies etc. tend to be WEIRD (Western, educated, from industrialized, rich, and democratic countries). So “rich in comparison with most of the world’s population” is probably the relevant criterion, and actually individual wealth as opposed to the wealth of the country you’re in isn’t really the point.
Although, if LW is mostly read by the WEIRD, having its content mostly written by and targeted at the WEIRD isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Just out of curiosity, do you mean $100k/year income or $100k assets or what?
(Looking again at the definition of WEIRD, it occurs to me that it’s immensely redundant, which isn’t terribly surprising since the items in the list were presumably designed to make the WEIRD acronym possible. Industrialized nations and rich nations are more or less the same thing. Both correlate highly with being democratic. “Western” more or less implies all three. Most people in Western nations are highly educated by global standards, though I guess it’s also true that subjects of psychology studies are better-educated than average even among Westerners. But “Psychology is WE” wouldn’t have sounded as good as “Psychology is WEIRD”.)
do you mean $100k/year income or $100k assets or what?
100k saved somewhere is the baseline, I don’t know enough about American prices to say about how much extra stuff should be worth. The most reasonable addition I can come with is no debt, or payments.
On a side note, I never really understood the whole “$x a year” thing. There are so many expenses during the year itself that what you made the whole year is pretty much irrelevant.
I think Patri’s whole post was pretty much this.
If you feel free speech is threatened, then you have bigger problems to worry about.
Only weak-willed people are afraid of disagreement. In a self-respecting community, you can say “you’re wrong, here’s 11 reasons why: [1] [2] [3]”.
Unless you’re running the simulation, I doubt you’d be the only one to know that. I’d actually advise you to tell about it so it will be properly dealt with.
Terrible example, it has no relevance to a job interview.
That’s what friends are for.
Zero-sum.
So? (what of being western is of importance?)
No fools in my garden. (Well-kept gardens die by pacifism)
Sorry folks, internet only. No “The LessWrong Times” available. (By no fault of our own)
By third-world comparisons, yes. Otherwise, I doubt it. Provide an example. (Or pledge 50% of your richness to GiveWell)
I’ve never seen a discussion about this, so no comment. (Mind linking to one?)
Men are far more interested in stuff like this. This is no category and in fact I doubt women won’t be included should they want to. (If women are ‘turned off’ by the discussion here, and therefore choose not to participate, then they both don’t have to, and the inverse would be true for me and probably a significant amount of men too)
Well, that’s pretty much a given. That’s not a bad thing, and if it’s a good thing is debateable.
In case the user is inactive: I have no idea what he meant. Not everyone is rational or being 100% effective or whatever. The last sentence feels like a LW-complete sanity test, and a very scary one by it’s implications of the userbase being completely off-base with reality.
I’m sure people would oppose more people like me. Leaving me aside, “diversity” seems like an ideal that I’m not sure what it actually implies. Let’s add women, and people of colour, and some monkeys and jackdaws. That’s just my silly recommendations though. What do you imply by “diversity” that LW is lacking, and why is it important to be included?
Me too. I think they’re silly.
You mean trigger warning.
Correct, but you still need to infinitely recurse.
Agreed. I’d put other stuff on the list, but it would derail this post well past oblivion.
Then what is the point of the previously mentioned diversity? To me it looks like a contradiction and admittance that it’s not a very utility-generating ideal.
Yeah, the high school jock cliche won’t like it. Can’t disagree with you about the cheerleaders, though.
You’ve already made a point I agreed with on rationality T-shirts being silly, there’s no reason to implement a mildly different form of it that accomplishes the same thing.
No, it’s only bad news to you. People who recognize weak aspects of them and try to self-improve should be applauded. You are, as far as I am concerned, dragging humanity down. Now tell me where you keep those un-traceable rifles. (The examples are admittedly silly but they’re mere examples)
(A note of importance to me is what they consider ‘interesting’, and why. Are they trying to appeal to a different group?)
Agreed, but on the other hand, those talking about that are probably fify books or so ahead of you. I don’t participate in the AI department and don’t plan to. On the other hand, there’s plenty of topics where LW could theoretically help, but they appear less commonly and there’s less people who can help with them.
There’s also the issue of specialization: the more specialized a topic, the more you need to know about it. Highly specialized topics shouldn’t be confused with a high entry barrier.
Too many places suffer from this to one degree or another, but unless the community bands together (LW wiki?) and makes those ‘already posted’ stuff easy to access so it won’t be reposted.
Maybe a bunch of AI researchers can make something that goes through text and tells the user “this might have been already posted”. And hopefully it won’t destroy the world while it’s at it, too.
Once again, infinite recursion.
Such as? You don’t need to publicy discuss EVERYTHING, either.
Unless a community has no merit, you can take the good stuff with you and leave the rest.
I heard that’s bad for you and you shouldn’t mention it. That correlates with the first one, amusingly enough.
Live your life as you see fit.
However, said agent must first research happiness thoroughly before making such a statement. There’s also individual reactions, but that’s getting too precise for my calculations.
That happens to everything, eventually. Overlaps with my aforementioned specialization.
This is a community-only thing, though. People can develop and have different experiences and the next best thing to do is what we can take from LW and how we can apply it in our life.
Best thing I can say is: maybe people like it? Maybe they want to write something. Why not let them? So what if only nerds read it.
There’s an insulting, “what-if” that assumes it’s not only correct but also unquestionable and any deviation from it should be punished with a smack on your head in that title.
If we’ve become redundant on the topic of rationality, then it’s time to stop milking the cow and start using it in our life. This is the real rationality test; the real freakin’ deal.
Everything below that list is excellent and I don’t regret taking a reading break for this just because of that.
Unless the third world includes the United States outside of the Bay Area and New England (which, judging by the term “fly-over country”, it probably does in lots of minds), then yes, LWers talking about attending CFAR’s $3000 workshops and traveling all over the place and how they’re already working for a big software giant and talked their bosses into giving them a raise are signs of being toward the higher end of the American Middle Class, if not higher. Just having so many programmers and the occasional psychiatrist is enough to put LW into the “rich even by first world standards” category.
This has come up before. Some LWer who is not rich points out that LWers are on average pretty dang rich, and most everyone goes “surely not! Just abandon everything you have and move to Silicon Valley with the money you don’t have and surely you’ll get a programming job, and realize how not-rich we are!” *
I am not trying to signal tribal affiliation when I say that LW unintentionally taught me to appreciate the whole “check your privilege” concept.
Having said all that, there are a few people who aren’t financially successful STEM lords around here. It’s just that they are decidedly not the majority of dominant voices.
* The first and last phrases might be a bit uncharitable, but the reaction is generally disbelief, in spite of the fact that LWers do seem to have thousands of dollars whenever they need them. Just a couple days ago, someone on Facebook was trying to get someone to go with him on a trip to Indiana, so they could split the gas money, but he realized he really needed to spend that money elsewhere. I’ve had reasonably middle-class people on Facebook trying to come up with someplace to stay, asking for donations for emergencies, saying how they wish they could justify spending money on things far cheaper than a new computer… and all of them are financially and socially way better off than me.
I conclude from the discussion that the term “rich” is too vague. The following is mine: I should be surprised to find many LWers who don’t find themselves in the top percentage of the Global Richlist and who could not afford cryonics if they made it their lives’ goal.
It looks like MOST of the descriptions people are using for “richness” are pretty vague, which I find to be weird since we actually have readily available numbers.
Median US individual income is $26,695 . Unless you want to claim that half of Americans are “poor” or lower class, you should probably start your middle class no lower than that.
(ETA: For a full-time worker over the age of 25 it’s $39k, so you could maybe push it up to that, but it disregards a lot of people who are stuck in part time jobs, or are kept working at just below full time so that they don’t have to be given benefits)
10%ers start at $82k. I think it would be silly to say someone in the top 10% of US earners isn’t rich. Almost all STEM LWers I’ve met either make well above this, or work for a non-profit.
Not that I suggest that everyone adopt these definitions, but I usually use these words in the following meaning:
Rich—“financially independent”, you don’t have to work if you don’t want to and still have at least upper-middle-class lifestyle.
Upper-middle—not worry about money too much, it’s sufficient for comfortable and socially adequate lifestyle, but you need a high-paying job and can’t really afford expensive extravagances.
Middle—money is kinda OK, you can afford all the necessities and some (but not many) luxuries.
Lower-middle—money is tight, you can afford most necessities, but few if any luxuries
Lower—Paycheck to paycheck (if you have a job), no reserves, any crisis can thoroughly screw you up.
I just split people into “spends less than half of what I do,” “reasonable,” and “spends more than twice what I do.” [/joke]
Yeah, these are also known as “poor bastards”, “regular people”, and “rich bastards” :-D
There are three different variables: income, consumption, and wealth, which confuse any discussion of economic class. Someone who is high-income, high-consumption, and low-wealth is probably working >40 hours a week at a professional job and worried about money, but also might be driving a fancy car and living in an expensive house.
In terms of life satisfaction, I get the sense that the primary variable that matters is wealth, but in terms of social status (for most groups), the primary variable that matters is consumption.
All true, but I wasn’t trying to construct some sort of a comprehensive social stratification scheme. It’s really just a quick list of what I mean when I’m using certain words.
I’m with you. I believe we use different meaning of rich. What do you mean by your own “rich”?
I can’t really give a reason for this, but 100k dollars would be “rich” for me, and that includes a lot of luxuries, too.
The context was the famous observation that subjects of psychological studies etc. tend to be WEIRD (Western, educated, from industrialized, rich, and democratic countries). So “rich in comparison with most of the world’s population” is probably the relevant criterion, and actually individual wealth as opposed to the wealth of the country you’re in isn’t really the point.
Although, if LW is mostly read by the WEIRD, having its content mostly written by and targeted at the WEIRD isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Just out of curiosity, do you mean $100k/year income or $100k assets or what?
(Looking again at the definition of WEIRD, it occurs to me that it’s immensely redundant, which isn’t terribly surprising since the items in the list were presumably designed to make the WEIRD acronym possible. Industrialized nations and rich nations are more or less the same thing. Both correlate highly with being democratic. “Western” more or less implies all three. Most people in Western nations are highly educated by global standards, though I guess it’s also true that subjects of psychology studies are better-educated than average even among Westerners. But “Psychology is WE” wouldn’t have sounded as good as “Psychology is WEIRD”.)
100k saved somewhere is the baseline, I don’t know enough about American prices to say about how much extra stuff should be worth. The most reasonable addition I can come with is no debt, or payments.
On a side note, I never really understood the whole “$x a year” thing. There are so many expenses during the year itself that what you made the whole year is pretty much irrelevant.
shrug I could afford cryonics if I made it my life’s goal [pollid:1076]