Unfortunately, all these data points have been already filtered. Learning that some non-cultural-nerds aren’t scared away by the nerdisms here is good, and thank you, but I wish I saw way to coax a more meaningful statistic out of them. “100% of non-nerds who still post on Less Wrong haven’t been discouraged away from posting on Less Wrong”, fine, but for each one of you are there 0.01 or 100 others who didn’t stick around?
I’m reminded of a comment here about “borrowing offense”: you can’t try to single-handedly anticipate and eliminate everything that might hypothetically bother someone else, because without actual bothered people to talk to you have no way to tell where to start or stop. But what are the odds that someone reading this page is so anti-nerdiness that they’re considering leaving the site but not so anti-nerdiness that they’ve left already?
It still makes difference whether the “100% of non-nerds who still post on Less Wrong” is an empty set or makes half of the Less Wrong membership. The data aren’t completely filtered, learning that there are non-nerds here is evidence that the non-nerd intimidation isn’t too strong.
Unfortunately, all these data points have been already filtered. Learning that some non-cultural-nerds aren’t scared away by the nerdisms here is good, and thank you, but I wish I saw way to coax a more meaningful statistic out of them. “100% of non-nerds who still post on Less Wrong haven’t been discouraged away from posting on Less Wrong”, fine, but for each one of you are there 0.01 or 100 others who didn’t stick around?
I’m reminded of a comment here about “borrowing offense”: you can’t try to single-handedly anticipate and eliminate everything that might hypothetically bother someone else, because without actual bothered people to talk to you have no way to tell where to start or stop. But what are the odds that someone reading this page is so anti-nerdiness that they’re considering leaving the site but not so anti-nerdiness that they’ve left already?
It still makes difference whether the “100% of non-nerds who still post on Less Wrong” is an empty set or makes half of the Less Wrong membership. The data aren’t completely filtered, learning that there are non-nerds here is evidence that the non-nerd intimidation isn’t too strong.