I think I got a lot out of not knowing anything about the broader rationalist community while reading the sequences. I think that consideration weighs against.
There’s this notion of how the average member of a group is very different from the ideal member of a group, which definitely holds for rationalists. And there’s a common failure-mode when trying to join a group of acting superficially like their average member rather than their ideal member. There’s some blog post somewhere which discusses this that I can’t find. Having as little contact as possible with the community while making your plan on how to act like their ideal member nips this failure-mode in the butt.
Similarly to 1, there’s some evidence that showing students’ their relative performance on average reduces their outcomes, since many overestimate the competition, and work harder for it. I know this happened with me.
Also, did you know that the bottom of each post on ReadTheSequences.com has a link to the comments section for that post, via GreaterWrong…?)
I did know that, but the comments are old and sparse, and perhaps necessary when trying to understand a tricky post. The community ignorance consideration definitely weighs against those, but the ‘help me make sense of this post’ consideration made the comments net good when I was reading them first.
Hmm, I think I see your general point. However, I am still not clear on what connection a video has to that point. Or are you thinking of YouTube comments under the video…?
Nothing big, just comments as you said, art made by rationalists giving a sense of the skill distribution of the movement, the view counter giving a sense of the popularity of the ideas, and potentially other inferences one could make.
I think I got a lot out of not knowing anything about the broader rationalist community while reading the sequences. I think that consideration weighs against.
Could you say more about this? I’m not sure that I quite see what you mean.
(Also, did you know that the bottom of each post on ReadTheSequences.com has a link to the comments section for that post, via GreaterWrong…?)
Two main considerations I have here:
There’s this notion of how the average member of a group is very different from the ideal member of a group, which definitely holds for rationalists. And there’s a common failure-mode when trying to join a group of acting superficially like their average member rather than their ideal member. There’s some blog post somewhere which discusses this that I can’t find. Having as little contact as possible with the community while making your plan on how to act like their ideal member nips this failure-mode in the butt.
Similarly to 1, there’s some evidence that showing students’ their relative performance on average reduces their outcomes, since many overestimate the competition, and work harder for it. I know this happened with me.
I did know that, but the comments are old and sparse, and perhaps necessary when trying to understand a tricky post. The community ignorance consideration definitely weighs against those, but the ‘help me make sense of this post’ consideration made the comments net good when I was reading them first.
Hmm, I think I see your general point. However, I am still not clear on what connection a video has to that point. Or are you thinking of YouTube comments under the video…?
Nothing big, just comments as you said, art made by rationalists giving a sense of the skill distribution of the movement, the view counter giving a sense of the popularity of the ideas, and potentially other inferences one could make.