People have some kind of tendency to believe that if a conversation happens on the internet, it isn’t very important or worthwhile.
Not quite. An average conversation on the ’net isn’t very important or worthwhile. However the tails are long and once you get far away from the mean, some very important and worthwhile conversations can be had.
The top posters don’t think they or lesswrong is effective at changing the world; however this is a nice place to hang out. I don’t know what an effective place would look like but it is almost certainly not this place.
Some Less Wrong posts clearly have a lot of effort put in to them. And some seem to me quite valuable, even to the point of potentially “changing the world” the way the best journal articles do.
The content is more important than the medium. I think high-quality content is a self-fulfilling prophecy to a certain degree.
Ah, I see. The thing that strikes me here is the difference between “potentially could” and “will”—having conversations is not quite the same thing as going out and actually doing stuff.
Seems to me you underestimate the difficulty of changing the world.
I just read Elon Musk’s biography a few weeks ago and that put me in a pretty good mood :) It doesn’t seem like there are many competent, determined people who are bold enough to think they can do something great. In our society, thinking you can do something awesome is considered naive, so people who want to appear sophisticated rarely think this. Which is its own self-fulfilling prophecy. People were derisive of Elon for years before he ended up proving himself right. “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do”—cheesy but likely true.
It doesn’t seem like there are many competent, determined people who are bold enough to think they can do something great.
The “competent” part is the iffy one, but the startup world is chock-full of “determined people who are bold enough to think they can do something great”. The great majority of them, of course, fail.
The problem with making high-stakes bets (e.g. on one’s career path) is that the expected outcome of failing will be pretty painful.
Not quite. An average conversation on the ’net isn’t very important or worthwhile. However the tails are long and once you get far away from the mean, some very important and worthwhile conversations can be had.
Sure. It doesn’t seem like the median book/journal article is very special either though.
No, but at least it probably had considerably more effort behind it :-)
I am not quite sure against whom (or what) are you arguing.
Against this statement:
Some Less Wrong posts clearly have a lot of effort put in to them. And some seem to me quite valuable, even to the point of potentially “changing the world” the way the best journal articles do.
The content is more important than the medium. I think high-quality content is a self-fulfilling prophecy to a certain degree.
Ah, I see. The thing that strikes me here is the difference between “potentially could” and “will”—having conversations is not quite the same thing as going out and actually doing stuff.
Seems to me you underestimate the difficulty of changing the world.
I just read Elon Musk’s biography a few weeks ago and that put me in a pretty good mood :) It doesn’t seem like there are many competent, determined people who are bold enough to think they can do something great. In our society, thinking you can do something awesome is considered naive, so people who want to appear sophisticated rarely think this. Which is its own self-fulfilling prophecy. People were derisive of Elon for years before he ended up proving himself right. “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do”—cheesy but likely true.
The “competent” part is the iffy one, but the startup world is chock-full of “determined people who are bold enough to think they can do something great”. The great majority of them, of course, fail.
The problem with making high-stakes bets (e.g. on one’s career path) is that the expected outcome of failing will be pretty painful.
...yet the ones that succeed end up having a huge impact on the world economy. I’m willing to be a missile that misses its target.
Anyway, we are talking about blog posts here not careers :) The downsides of accidentally writing a lousy blog post are not large.