Of course, if LW were truly meritocratic (which it should be), this shouldn’t matter — but in my experience, it descriptively does.
That’s not really true if people are popular rationalist thinkers because of skill at good rationalist writing. Meritocracy does not imply that people get judged based on individual pieces of their work, a meritocracy where people are primarily judged on their total output would still be a meritocracy.
I think the problem is more that post that make points that are popular and fit neatly into the world view of the reader are more likely to get upvotes than posts that challenge the world view of the reader and would require the reader to update their world view. Jimmy’s introductionary post to his sequence is currently as I’m writing it at 12 karma.
While writing quality might be improved, it’s a post that sets out to challenges the readers conception about how human reasoning works in practical contexts and that’s why it’s at low karma. I would love to see more posts like Jimmy that are about the core of how rationality works over posts that feel good to read and that get lot of upvotes without really changing minds much.
That’s not really true if people are popular rationalist thinkers because of skill at good rationalist writing. Meritocracy does not imply that people get judged based on individual pieces of their work, a meritocracy where people are primarily judged on their total output would still be a meritocracy.
I think the problem is more that post that make points that are popular and fit neatly into the world view of the reader are more likely to get upvotes than posts that challenge the world view of the reader and would require the reader to update their world view. Jimmy’s introductionary post to his sequence is currently as I’m writing it at 12 karma.
While writing quality might be improved, it’s a post that sets out to challenges the readers conception about how human reasoning works in practical contexts and that’s why it’s at low karma. I would love to see more posts like Jimmy that are about the core of how rationality works over posts that feel good to read and that get lot of upvotes without really changing minds much.