you can’t force yourself to enjoy something you don’t enjoy
This particular point is demonstrably false, at least as a general one: people acquire taste for foods and activities they previously disliked all the time.
Knowing about biases does little to prevent them from happening
There are plenty of (anecdotal) examples to the contrary. I find myself thinking something like “am I being biased in assuming...” all the time, now that I have been on this forum for years. I heard similar sentiments from others, as well.
it takes a lot of conscious, slow effort to be rational
That’s true enough. But it is also true in general for almost every System 2-type activity (like learning to drive), until it gets internalized in System 1.
In the face of real-life problems, true rationality is often pretty much impossible as it would take more computing power than available in the universe.
Indeed it is impossible to get a perfectly optimal solution, and one of the biases is the proverbial “analysis paralysis”, where an excuse for doing nothing is that anything you do is suboptimal. However, an essential part of being instrumentally rational is figuring out the right amount of computing power to dedicate to a particular problem before acting.
a lot of the issues of this site could simply be a matter of technical fixes
Indeed a different template could have worked better. Who knows. However, a decision had to be made within the time and budget constraints, and, while suboptimal, it was good enough to let the site thrive. See above about bounded rationality.
This is the system that slashdot follows and I think it seems to work extremely well.
Except Reddit is clearly winning, in the “rationalists must win” sense, and Slashdot has all but disappeared, or at least has been severely marginalized compared to its late 90s heydays .
This particular point is demonstrably false, at least as a general one: people acquire taste for foods and activities they previously disliked all the time.
I’ve done this a lot. Each time I did, it wasn’t because I forced myself, it was because I saw some new attractive thing in those foods or activities that I didn’t see before. Perception and enjoyment aren’t constant. People are more likely to try new activities when they are in a good mood (for instance). Mood alters perception. In that sense I actually agree with Villiam_Bur. You can get more people to become ‘rationalists’ through engaging and fun activities. But you have to ask yourself what the ultimate goal is and if it can succeed for making people more rational.
However, an essential part of being instrumentally rational is figuring out the right amount of computing power to dedicate to a particular problem before acting.
The most powerful ‘subsystem’ in the brain is the subconscious system 1 part. This is the part that can bring the most computational power to bear on a problem. Making an effort to focus your system 2 cognition on solving a problem (rather than simply doing what comes instinctively) can backfire. But it gets worse. There’s no ‘system monitor’ for the brain. And even if there was, if you go even more meta, optimizing resource allocation for solving problem X may itself be a much harder problem than solving X using the first method that comes to mind.
Except Reddit is clearly winning, in the “rationalists must win” sense, and Slashdot has all but disappeared, or at least has been severely marginalized compared to its late 90s heydays .
I know it’s an extremely subjective opinion, but it seems to me that the slashdot system reduces spread of misinformation and reduces downvote fights (and overall flamewars). As for why slashdot has shrunk as a community, I suppose it’s partly because reddit has grown, and reddit seems to have grown because of the ‘digg exodus’ (largely self-inflicted by digg) and the subreddit idea. Remember that there used to be many news aggregators (like digg) that have all but disappeared.
The idea here shouldn’t be “let’s adopt the most popular forum system”, it should be “let’s adopt the forum system that is most conducive to the goals of the community.” And we have at least one important data point (Eliezer) indicating the contrary.
The idea here shouldn’t be “let’s adopt the most popular forum system”, it should be “let’s adopt the forum system that is most conducive to the goals of the community.”
Disregarding your use of the word “community” for what’s best described as an online social club, who’s to say that we’re not doing this already? The “forum system that is most conducive” to our goals might well be a combination of one very open central site (LessWrong itself) supplemented by a variety of more private sites that discuss rationality in different ways, catering to a variety of niches. Not just Eliezer’s Facebook page, but including things like MoreRight, Yvain’s blog, Overcoming Bias, Give Well etc.
The “forum system that is most conducive” to our goals might well be a combination of one very open central site (LessWrong itself) supplemented by a variety of more private sites that discuss rationality in different ways, catering to a variety of niches. Not just Eliezer’s Facebook page, but including things like MoreRight, Yvain’s blog, Overcoming Bias, Give Well etc.
This makes me a little suspicious as a solution, only because there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly special about it besides being precisely the system that is already in place.
Because, y’know, communities actually exist, like, in the real world. More relevantly, they have a fairly important goal in protecting real, actual people from bodily harm and providing a nurturing environment for them to thrive in. Since this does not apply to virtual, Internet sites, calling them “communities” is quite misleading and can have bad side-effects if the metaphor is taken seriously, either by accident or through sneaking connotations. So I think it’s better if folks are sometimes encouraged to taboo this particular term.
This particular point is demonstrably false, at least as a general one: people acquire taste for foods and activities they previously disliked all the time.
There are plenty of (anecdotal) examples to the contrary. I find myself thinking something like “am I being biased in assuming...” all the time, now that I have been on this forum for years. I heard similar sentiments from others, as well.
That’s true enough. But it is also true in general for almost every System 2-type activity (like learning to drive), until it gets internalized in System 1.
Indeed it is impossible to get a perfectly optimal solution, and one of the biases is the proverbial “analysis paralysis”, where an excuse for doing nothing is that anything you do is suboptimal. However, an essential part of being instrumentally rational is figuring out the right amount of computing power to dedicate to a particular problem before acting.
Indeed a different template could have worked better. Who knows. However, a decision had to be made within the time and budget constraints, and, while suboptimal, it was good enough to let the site thrive. See above about bounded rationality.
Except Reddit is clearly winning, in the “rationalists must win” sense, and Slashdot has all but disappeared, or at least has been severely marginalized compared to its late 90s heydays .
I’ve done this a lot. Each time I did, it wasn’t because I forced myself, it was because I saw some new attractive thing in those foods or activities that I didn’t see before. Perception and enjoyment aren’t constant. People are more likely to try new activities when they are in a good mood (for instance). Mood alters perception. In that sense I actually agree with Villiam_Bur. You can get more people to become ‘rationalists’ through engaging and fun activities. But you have to ask yourself what the ultimate goal is and if it can succeed for making people more rational.
The most powerful ‘subsystem’ in the brain is the subconscious system 1 part. This is the part that can bring the most computational power to bear on a problem. Making an effort to focus your system 2 cognition on solving a problem (rather than simply doing what comes instinctively) can backfire. But it gets worse. There’s no ‘system monitor’ for the brain. And even if there was, if you go even more meta, optimizing resource allocation for solving problem X may itself be a much harder problem than solving X using the first method that comes to mind.
I know it’s an extremely subjective opinion, but it seems to me that the slashdot system reduces spread of misinformation and reduces downvote fights (and overall flamewars). As for why slashdot has shrunk as a community, I suppose it’s partly because reddit has grown, and reddit seems to have grown because of the ‘digg exodus’ (largely self-inflicted by digg) and the subreddit idea. Remember that there used to be many news aggregators (like digg) that have all but disappeared.
The idea here shouldn’t be “let’s adopt the most popular forum system”, it should be “let’s adopt the forum system that is most conducive to the goals of the community.” And we have at least one important data point (Eliezer) indicating the contrary.
Disregarding your use of the word “community” for what’s best described as an online social club, who’s to say that we’re not doing this already? The “forum system that is most conducive” to our goals might well be a combination of one very open central site (LessWrong itself) supplemented by a variety of more private sites that discuss rationality in different ways, catering to a variety of niches. Not just Eliezer’s Facebook page, but including things like MoreRight, Yvain’s blog, Overcoming Bias, Give Well etc.
This makes me a little suspicious as a solution, only because there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly special about it besides being precisely the system that is already in place.
What do you see as being the distinction between a “community” and a mere “online social club”? Genuinely confused.
Because, y’know, communities actually exist, like, in the real world. More relevantly, they have a fairly important goal in protecting real, actual people from bodily harm and providing a nurturing environment for them to thrive in. Since this does not apply to virtual, Internet sites, calling them “communities” is quite misleading and can have bad side-effects if the metaphor is taken seriously, either by accident or through sneaking connotations. So I think it’s better if folks are sometimes encouraged to taboo this particular term.