You folks live in an echo chamber in which you tell each other that you are sensible, sane and capable of rational argument, while the rest of the world are all idiots.
I dunno, I had seen plenty of evidence that “the rest of the world are all idiots” (assuming I understand you correctly) long before encountering LessWrong. I don’t think that’s an echo chamber (although other things may be.)
(Although I must admit LessWrong has a long way to go. This community is far from perfect.)
I have news for you. The rest of the world considers the community surrounding Eliezer Yudkowsky to be a quasi-cult comprised mostly of people who brainwash each other into thinking they are smart, rational, etc., but who are in fact quite ignorant of a lot of technical facts, and incapable of discussing anything in an intelligent, coherent, rational manner.
“The rest of the world”?
I’m aware of one small community that believes this (RationalWiki). I’m also aware of a sort of cloud of people who, while they may quite emphatically reject LessWrong, nonetheless seem to mostly hang out around people who know about it. Beyond that … I don’t think LessWrong is high profile enough; maybe those involved in some related fields might have opinions on it, having encountered LWers in the course of their work …
This comment will, of course, be deleted or downvoted as soon as possible.
Well … yeah. Downvoted, that is, and if you keep starting arguments in the middle of unrelated threads, yes, they will probably be deleted.
However, if you wish to actually argue against specific claims routinely made on this site, I for one will certainly try to give you a fair hearing.
I would advise you to check out the discussions surrounding previous discussions on those topics (to make sure you have responses for the most common arguments), and generally be very careful to avoid making poor or confused arguments LWers have been trained to identify among the opposition.
If you want evidence for or against my statement, use scientific methods to do some sampling, and then compute the likelihood that what I have said above is correct: ask some very smart people from outside to come here, look over your discussions and give an opinion. And then decide what to do when they tell you that, yes, you are a cult led by a fool.
I routinely use LessWrong articles whenever I need to reference a concept common here in a discussion, and thus far have seen little evidence for your claim. Then again, maybe I was talking to the wrong people.
What criteria did you have in mind for “very smart”? Or, for that matter, “look over your discussions?” Are you suggesting giving people links to the Sequences, randomly selected discussion threads, or simply the front page?
I dunno, I had seen plenty of evidence that “the rest of the world are all idiots” (assuming I understand you correctly) long before encountering LessWrong. I don’t think that’s an echo chamber (although other things may be.)
(Although I must admit LessWrong has a long way to go. This community is far from perfect.)
“The rest of the world”?
I’m aware of one small community that believes this (RationalWiki). I’m also aware of a sort of cloud of people who, while they may quite emphatically reject LessWrong, nonetheless seem to mostly hang out around people who know about it. Beyond that … I don’t think LessWrong is high profile enough; maybe those involved in some related fields might have opinions on it, having encountered LWers in the course of their work …
Well … yeah. Downvoted, that is, and if you keep starting arguments in the middle of unrelated threads, yes, they will probably be deleted.
However, if you wish to actually argue against specific claims routinely made on this site, I for one will certainly try to give you a fair hearing.
I would advise you to check out the discussions surrounding previous discussions on those topics (to make sure you have responses for the most common arguments), and generally be very careful to avoid making poor or confused arguments LWers have been trained to identify among the opposition.
I routinely use LessWrong articles whenever I need to reference a concept common here in a discussion, and thus far have seen little evidence for your claim. Then again, maybe I was talking to the wrong people.
What criteria did you have in mind for “very smart”? Or, for that matter, “look over your discussions?” Are you suggesting giving people links to the Sequences, randomly selected discussion threads, or simply the front page?