Um, you can buy a whiteboard comparable to what you made in any office-supply store—they’re quite cheap. Whiteboards made with laminated plastic (though usually melamine as opposed to vinyl) are quite common, the problem is that they don’t stand up to heavy use (such as in a classroom or a crowded office setting) because the laminated surface ultimately comes off. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very nice that you had some fun and managed to make this using what would normally be waste material, but other than that there’s very little value here.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s very nice that you had some fun and managed to make this using what would normally be waste material, but other than that there’s very little value here.
I see that you have been downvoted; not by me.
I predicted that there would be a subset of the LessWrong audience that would not find this post particularly valuable, and this is why I left a content note addressing this concern at the beginning. Ideally, instead of rehashed arguments over relevance and bad karma, we get a situation where people who will like the subject of the article read it and comment on it, and people who won’t like the subject of the article never read it and never comment on it. (And I don’t mean that people can’t still criticize things that they like, or that someone who dislikes the subject can’t read it anyway and offer constructive criticism.) If there were subreddits, I’m sure this would be easier. But that’s still being worked on and this is the best that we have.
And the larger point of the article is not me making a whiteboard, but the idea that it makes sense to try to predict what will be fun from principle, and use it to make our lives more fun. And there are people who have already done this successfully. (E.g. game designers, game programmers, anyone who’s invented a successful sport, etc.) I have a hard time seeing that as unvaluable, and I’ve definitely never seen it written before. This is what I’m talking about when I talk about audience members’ preferences over subject matter.
Um, you can buy a whiteboard comparable to what you made in any office-supply store—they’re quite cheap. Whiteboards made with laminated plastic (though usually melamine as opposed to vinyl) are quite common, the problem is that they don’t stand up to heavy use (such as in a classroom or a crowded office setting) because the laminated surface ultimately comes off.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s very nice that you had some fun and managed to make this using what would normally be waste material, but other than that there’s very little value here.
I see that you have been downvoted; not by me.
I predicted that there would be a subset of the LessWrong audience that would not find this post particularly valuable, and this is why I left a content note addressing this concern at the beginning. Ideally, instead of rehashed arguments over relevance and bad karma, we get a situation where people who will like the subject of the article read it and comment on it, and people who won’t like the subject of the article never read it and never comment on it. (And I don’t mean that people can’t still criticize things that they like, or that someone who dislikes the subject can’t read it anyway and offer constructive criticism.) If there were subreddits, I’m sure this would be easier. But that’s still being worked on and this is the best that we have.
And the larger point of the article is not me making a whiteboard, but the idea that it makes sense to try to predict what will be fun from principle, and use it to make our lives more fun. And there are people who have already done this successfully. (E.g. game designers, game programmers, anyone who’s invented a successful sport, etc.) I have a hard time seeing that as unvaluable, and I’ve definitely never seen it written before. This is what I’m talking about when I talk about audience members’ preferences over subject matter.