You are correct in your observation that this section does not have a high rate of new posts. I’m not sure, but I think you are likely correct in your guess that a flood of new posts would not be appreciated. LessWrong doesn’t have a very traditional forum structure, and I’m not sure that a place exists on this site yet that quite fits your posting style. I’m commenting here in part because that puts you in the same boat as me—my first comment on this site was the opinion that the avenues of participation in LW don’t seem to fit how I like to express myself, and that probably other potential users were in the same situation. I think LW doesn’t lend itself to conversation or stepwise refinement of ideas by a group, which is my best guess for how I would like to really engage with the ideas discussed here. That said, the site is changing and is itself open source, so this problem is tractable.
As to the more personal parts of your introduction, I think you sound like a great person to have a conversation with. I expect you may just find some people here who have enough in common with your informational omnivorousness and desire to think and make sense of things, and that this community will accept you and benefit from your input. The only point of criticism I (hesitantly) will offer is that the following excerpt is a bit worrisome:
I also have a massive number of posts on the Internet, although many of them are beyond embarrassing. In the end, though, I only look for people who are open to anything and completely non-judgmental (although some people may look for certain “signals” when they’re looking for prospective contacts, to minimize the chances of meeting a contact with which one may fear wasting time on). Basically, my ideal model (for hypothesis generation) involves this: I try to type out some hypotheses, and then post them online, in hopes that someone might critique them. Many of my hypotheses will be junk, but that’s okay. As long as I can maximize the number of useful ideas that I can generate, I think I’ll have done something.
My only concern is that while your goal is good, the methods perhaps leave something to be desired. It may well be the fastest way for you to learn, but putting the burden of critique of a large flow of ideas onto others can be something of an imposition. Time certainly is a valuable resource, as you state, and remember that other people value their time too. What I hope LW can do for you is read and critique just as you wish, but that also you learn here some habits and skills of thinking that allow you to do more and more of this sort of critique of your own ideas as you have them. My time at LW (and OB, and many other places on the net) has been spent largely lurking, in a project of refining my own ability to reason and critique effectively and correctly, and I hope that it works out for you that way too.
Hello, thanks very much for your post! I really appreciate it.
“my first comment on this site was the opinion that the avenues of participation in LW don’t seem to fit how I like to express myself, and that probably other potential users were in the same situation. I think LW doesn’t lend itself to conversation or stepwise refinement of ideas by a group, which is my best guess for how I would like to really engage with the ideas discussed here”
Ah yes, I definitely agree about that. Hence why I (and many others) am hesitant to post (the other thing is that no one seems to post in threads more than a month old, so there isn’t much I can post on). I know someone suggested the idea of subreddits some time ago, but we instead went with tags. But that just means that all the threads will go on a particular front page.
“My only concern is that while your goal is good, the methods perhaps leave something to be desired. It may well be the fastest way for you to learn, but putting the burden of critique of a large flow of ideas onto others can be something of an imposition. Time certainly is a valuable resource, as you state, and remember that other people value their time too. What I hope LW can do for you is read and critique just as you wish, but that also you learn here some habits and skills of thinking that allow you to do more and more of this sort of critique of your own ideas as you have them. My time at LW (and OB, and many other places on the net) has been spent largely lurking, in a project of refining my own ability to reason and critique effectively and correctly, and I hope that it works out for you that way too.”
Okay, very good points there. Yeah, I generally self-critique my own ideas (and frequently edit them without input). My main idea in putting everything online, in any case, was that someone (with time) could probably find me and email me (I’ve emailed other people who ended up not replying to my emails, so I ended up making everything public).
The “recent comments” feature (separate for discussion and main blog, but unfortunately not available for individual posts or comment threads) means that comments on old posts have a chance of being noticed.
Hello, and welcome.
You are correct in your observation that this section does not have a high rate of new posts. I’m not sure, but I think you are likely correct in your guess that a flood of new posts would not be appreciated. LessWrong doesn’t have a very traditional forum structure, and I’m not sure that a place exists on this site yet that quite fits your posting style. I’m commenting here in part because that puts you in the same boat as me—my first comment on this site was the opinion that the avenues of participation in LW don’t seem to fit how I like to express myself, and that probably other potential users were in the same situation. I think LW doesn’t lend itself to conversation or stepwise refinement of ideas by a group, which is my best guess for how I would like to really engage with the ideas discussed here. That said, the site is changing and is itself open source, so this problem is tractable.
As to the more personal parts of your introduction, I think you sound like a great person to have a conversation with. I expect you may just find some people here who have enough in common with your informational omnivorousness and desire to think and make sense of things, and that this community will accept you and benefit from your input. The only point of criticism I (hesitantly) will offer is that the following excerpt is a bit worrisome:
My only concern is that while your goal is good, the methods perhaps leave something to be desired. It may well be the fastest way for you to learn, but putting the burden of critique of a large flow of ideas onto others can be something of an imposition. Time certainly is a valuable resource, as you state, and remember that other people value their time too. What I hope LW can do for you is read and critique just as you wish, but that also you learn here some habits and skills of thinking that allow you to do more and more of this sort of critique of your own ideas as you have them. My time at LW (and OB, and many other places on the net) has been spent largely lurking, in a project of refining my own ability to reason and critique effectively and correctly, and I hope that it works out for you that way too.
Hello, thanks very much for your post! I really appreciate it.
“my first comment on this site was the opinion that the avenues of participation in LW don’t seem to fit how I like to express myself, and that probably other potential users were in the same situation. I think LW doesn’t lend itself to conversation or stepwise refinement of ideas by a group, which is my best guess for how I would like to really engage with the ideas discussed here”
Ah yes, I definitely agree about that. Hence why I (and many others) am hesitant to post (the other thing is that no one seems to post in threads more than a month old, so there isn’t much I can post on). I know someone suggested the idea of subreddits some time ago, but we instead went with tags. But that just means that all the threads will go on a particular front page.
“My only concern is that while your goal is good, the methods perhaps leave something to be desired. It may well be the fastest way for you to learn, but putting the burden of critique of a large flow of ideas onto others can be something of an imposition. Time certainly is a valuable resource, as you state, and remember that other people value their time too. What I hope LW can do for you is read and critique just as you wish, but that also you learn here some habits and skills of thinking that allow you to do more and more of this sort of critique of your own ideas as you have them. My time at LW (and OB, and many other places on the net) has been spent largely lurking, in a project of refining my own ability to reason and critique effectively and correctly, and I hope that it works out for you that way too.”
Okay, very good points there. Yeah, I generally self-critique my own ideas (and frequently edit them without input). My main idea in putting everything online, in any case, was that someone (with time) could probably find me and email me (I’ve emailed other people who ended up not replying to my emails, so I ended up making everything public).
The “recent comments” feature (separate for discussion and main blog, but unfortunately not available for individual posts or comment threads) means that comments on old posts have a chance of being noticed.