I’ll have to come back and read the latter half of this tomorrow. In the meantime, welcome!
This isn’t really the best place for a flood of low-quality ideas, though I certainly see the point in producing that flood. It seems to me that you’d do best to get a blog (there are a few of us on livejournal, and accounts there are easy to set up) and post links here when you have something that seems particularly worthwhile. If the overall signal to noise ratio there isn’t too bad, you’ll probably wind up with some readers, too.
As to your neurotype—well, you might want to work on tightening your writing up a bit, but even when it comes to that I don’t expect anyone will hassle you about it. There are more than a few auties here, myself included, and I think we have a handful of ADD folks as well.
Also, your description of the kind of people you like to chat with sounds a bit like me. I’m fairly easily findable by this handle on several major IM systems, though my plate’s a bit full these days and I might not have much time or energy to share.
This isn’t really the best place for a flood of low-quality ideas
I somewhat disagree, but it depends on how much a “flood” we’re talking. Too many bad posts by a poster would be annoying and counterproductive because the poster would obviously not be taking the time to learn from their mistakes. However, the fastest way to become disabused of buggy thinking is to post it in public. That might annoy some who want to read only “high-quality” thoughts, but who cares? Those people can downvote and move along. A necessary prerequisite to becoming Less Wrong is to first be wrong, and to then realize that you are wrong. It seems to me that the discussion section is exactly the place where this process should occur.
Ah yes, good points there. Yeah, it really depends on the ratio of newcomers to oldcomers. Oldcomers get annoyed when they have to answer the same questions over and over again. Of course, they could just downvote and move along (in fact, it usually doesn’t cost much effort to do that). But for some reason, they get annoyed (it might even be irrational to get annoyed so easily, but lots of people believe that it’s hard not to get annoyed—and they often justify their annoyance).
Of course, they could just downvote and move along (in fact, it usually doesn’t cost much effort to do that).
And then the poster makes another post complaining about being downvoted. And when that one gets downvoted he accuses everyone of groupthink. Then it gets really nasty.
It my sound like I’m exaggerating, but this has already played out twice in the past two weeks.
That would be useful—although it’s hard to use for thoughtful posts. Maybe we could just create an informal forum within the site? (one that doesn’t require or expect posts to fit an implicit standard).
Hey, thanks for the welcome! I like your suggestion about the blog idea. Yeah, I generally don’t write this long—I just felt like I had to write this long for my intro post.
“Also, your description of the kind of people you like to chat with sounds a bit like me. I’m fairly easily findable by this handle on several major IM systems, though my plate’s a bit full these days and I might not have much time or energy to share.”
Ah nice. I’ll look you up (although the same is true for me, at least while I’m still in undergrad).
I’ll have to come back and read the latter half of this tomorrow. In the meantime, welcome!
This isn’t really the best place for a flood of low-quality ideas, though I certainly see the point in producing that flood. It seems to me that you’d do best to get a blog (there are a few of us on livejournal, and accounts there are easy to set up) and post links here when you have something that seems particularly worthwhile. If the overall signal to noise ratio there isn’t too bad, you’ll probably wind up with some readers, too.
As to your neurotype—well, you might want to work on tightening your writing up a bit, but even when it comes to that I don’t expect anyone will hassle you about it. There are more than a few auties here, myself included, and I think we have a handful of ADD folks as well.
Also, your description of the kind of people you like to chat with sounds a bit like me. I’m fairly easily findable by this handle on several major IM systems, though my plate’s a bit full these days and I might not have much time or energy to share.
I somewhat disagree, but it depends on how much a “flood” we’re talking. Too many bad posts by a poster would be annoying and counterproductive because the poster would obviously not be taking the time to learn from their mistakes. However, the fastest way to become disabused of buggy thinking is to post it in public. That might annoy some who want to read only “high-quality” thoughts, but who cares? Those people can downvote and move along. A necessary prerequisite to becoming Less Wrong is to first be wrong, and to then realize that you are wrong. It seems to me that the discussion section is exactly the place where this process should occur.
Ah yes, good points there. Yeah, it really depends on the ratio of newcomers to oldcomers. Oldcomers get annoyed when they have to answer the same questions over and over again. Of course, they could just downvote and move along (in fact, it usually doesn’t cost much effort to do that). But for some reason, they get annoyed (it might even be irrational to get annoyed so easily, but lots of people believe that it’s hard not to get annoyed—and they often justify their annoyance).
And then the poster makes another post complaining about being downvoted. And when that one gets downvoted he accuses everyone of groupthink. Then it gets really nasty.
It my sound like I’m exaggerating, but this has already played out twice in the past two weeks.
why don’t we have an IRC channel or something anyway? or did I just miss it?
We do.
That would be useful—although it’s hard to use for thoughtful posts. Maybe we could just create an informal forum within the site? (one that doesn’t require or expect posts to fit an implicit standard).
I think this IS the informal forum. If it were much less formal than this I wouldn’t bother perusing the quantity of posts I’d expect to find there.
IRC isn’t for thoughtful posts, it’s for realtime discussion, and it’s pretty good at that. :)
We regularly have open threads, which kind of fit that purpose.
This discussion section is somewhat new, and aims at replacing / completing the open threads (which aren’t very user-friendly).
Hey, thanks for the welcome! I like your suggestion about the blog idea. Yeah, I generally don’t write this long—I just felt like I had to write this long for my intro post.
“Also, your description of the kind of people you like to chat with sounds a bit like me. I’m fairly easily findable by this handle on several major IM systems, though my plate’s a bit full these days and I might not have much time or energy to share.”
Ah nice. I’ll look you up (although the same is true for me, at least while I’m still in undergrad).