I think when that culture was established, the community was missing important concepts about motivated reasoning and truth seeking
Can you be more specific? Can you name three specific concepts about motivated reasoning and truthseeking that you know, but Sequences-era Overcoming Bias/Less Wrong didn’t?
I think many of those norms originally caused the site to decline and people to go elsewhere.
I mean, that’s one hypothesis. In contrast, my model has been that communities congregate around predictable sources of high-quality writing, and people who can produce high-quality content in high volume are very rare. Thus, once Eliezer Yudkowsky stopped being active, and Yvain a.k.a. the immortal Scott Alexander moved to Slate Star Codex (in part so that he could write about politics, which we’ve traditionally avoided), all the “intellectual energy” followed Scott to SSC.
Can you think of any testable predictions (or retrodictions) that would distinguish my model from your model?
I also got that this is a subject you care a lot about.
Can you be more specific? Can you name three specific concepts about motivated reasoning and truthseeking that you know, but Sequences-era Overcoming Bias/Less Wrong didn’t?
Here are a few:
The importance of creating a culture that develops Kegan 5 leaders that can take over for the current leaders and help meaningfully change the values as the context changes, in a way that doesn’t simply cause organizations to value drift along with the current broader culture.
How ignoring or not attending for people’s needs creates incentives for motivated reasoning, and how to create spaces that get rid of those incentives WITHOUT being hijacked by whoever screams the loudest.
The importance of cultural tradition and ritual in embedding concepts in augmenting the teaching and telling people what concepts are important.
Can you think of any testable predictions (or retrodictions) that would distinguish my model from your model?
No because I think that our models are compatible. My model is about how to attract, retain, and develop people with high potential or skill that are in alignment your community’s values, and your model says that not retaining, attracting, or developing people that matched our communities values and had high writing skill is what caused it to fail.
If you can give a specific model of why LW1 failed to attract, retain, and develop high quality writers, then I think there’s a better space for comparison. Perhaps you can also point out some testable predictions that each of our models would make.
In contrast, my model has been that communities congregate around predictable sources of high-quality writing, and people who can produce high-quality content in high volume are very rare. Thus, once Eliezer Yudkowsky stopped being active, and Yvain a.k.a. the immortal Scott Alexander moved to Slate Star Codex (in part so that he could write about politics, which we’ve traditionally avoided), all the “intellectual energy” followed Scott to SSC.
First, I want to state that I agree with this model. However, I also want to note that the SSC comments section tend to have fairly low-quality discussion (in comparison to the OB/LW 1.0 heyday), and I’m not sure why this is; candidate hypotheses include that Scott’s explicit politics attracted people with lower epistemic standards, or that the lack of an explicit karma system allowed low-quality discussion to persist (but I don’t think OB had an explicit karma system either?).
Overall, I’m unsure as to what kind of norms/technology maintains high-quality discussion (as opposed to just the presence of discussion in general), and it’s plausible to me that the two may actually be somewhat mutually exclusive (in the sense that norms/technology designed to promote the volume of high-quality discussion may in fact reduce the volume of discussion in general). It’s not clear to me how this tradeoff should be balanced.
in part so that he could write about politics, which we’ve traditionally avoided
I want to state that I agree with this model.
(I sometimes think that I might be well-positioned to fill the market niche that Scott occupied in 2014, but no longer can due to his being extortable (“As I became more careful in my own writings [...]”) in a way that I have been trained not to be. But I would need to learn to write faster.)
One thing is that I think early OBNYC and LW just actually had a lot of chaff comments too. I think people disproportionately remember the great parts.
Can you be more specific? Can you name three specific concepts about motivated reasoning and truthseeking that you know, but Sequences-era Overcoming Bias/Less Wrong didn’t?
I mean, that’s one hypothesis. In contrast, my model has been that communities congregate around predictable sources of high-quality writing, and people who can produce high-quality content in high volume are very rare. Thus, once Eliezer Yudkowsky stopped being active, and Yvain a.k.a. the immortal Scott Alexander moved to Slate Star Codex (in part so that he could write about politics, which we’ve traditionally avoided), all the “intellectual energy” followed Scott to SSC.
Can you think of any testable predictions (or retrodictions) that would distinguish my model from your model?
Yes. Thanks for listening.
Here are a few:
The importance of creating a culture that develops Kegan 5 leaders that can take over for the current leaders and help meaningfully change the values as the context changes, in a way that doesn’t simply cause organizations to value drift along with the current broader culture.
How ignoring or not attending for people’s needs creates incentives for motivated reasoning, and how to create spaces that get rid of those incentives WITHOUT being hijacked by whoever screams the loudest.
The importance of cultural tradition and ritual in embedding concepts in augmenting the teaching and telling people what concepts are important.
No because I think that our models are compatible. My model is about how to attract, retain, and develop people with high potential or skill that are in alignment your community’s values, and your model says that not retaining, attracting, or developing people that matched our communities values and had high writing skill is what caused it to fail.
If you can give a specific model of why LW1 failed to attract, retain, and develop high quality writers, then I think there’s a better space for comparison. Perhaps you can also point out some testable predictions that each of our models would make.
First, I want to state that I agree with this model. However, I also want to note that the SSC comments section tend to have fairly low-quality discussion (in comparison to the OB/LW 1.0 heyday), and I’m not sure why this is; candidate hypotheses include that Scott’s explicit politics attracted people with lower epistemic standards, or that the lack of an explicit karma system allowed low-quality discussion to persist (but I don’t think OB had an explicit karma system either?).
Overall, I’m unsure as to what kind of norms/technology maintains high-quality discussion (as opposed to just the presence of discussion in general), and it’s plausible to me that the two may actually be somewhat mutually exclusive (in the sense that norms/technology designed to promote the volume of high-quality discussion may in fact reduce the volume of discussion in general). It’s not clear to me how this tradeoff should be balanced.
(I sometimes think that I might be well-positioned to fill the market niche that Scott occupied in 2014, but no longer can due to his being extortable (“As I became more careful in my own writings [...]”) in a way that I have been trained not to be. But I would need to learn to write faster.)
One thing is that I think early OBNYC and LW just actually had a lot of chaff comments too. I think people disproportionately remember the great parts.