I think that a serious flaw of Less Wrong is that the majority of commenters weigh the defensibility of a statement far higher than the value of the information that it carries (in the technical sense of information value).
A highly defensible statement can be nearly useless if it doesn’t pertain to something of relevance, whereas a mildly inaccurate and/or mildly hard to rhetorically defend statement can be extremely valuable if it reveals an insight that is highly relevant to aspects of reality that we care about.
I don’t think that the message is significantly changed if you add some variance to that.
You’re right—I’m just a bit trigger-happy about futurism.
I think that a serious flaw of Less Wrong is that the majority of commenters weigh the defensibility of a statement far higher than the value of the information that it carries (in the technical sense of information value).
A highly defensible statement can be nearly useless if it doesn’t pertain to something of relevance, whereas a mildly inaccurate and/or mildly hard to rhetorically defend statement can be extremely valuable if it reveals an insight that is highly relevant to aspects of reality that we care about.