Those islands you describe seem real (although “no smiles allowed” doesn’t resonate). But I think the sort of islands I’m looking for are arranged on a different axis that this.
I want to talk about AI, and Instrumental Rationality, and Questionable Practices That Might Help Your Epistemics Or Might Destroy Them, and High Adventure, and Blood for the Art God, and a bunch of other things – they all seem fairly connected to me (since I’m a person, and everything I do is connected in some way).
The Islands I’m interested in are “the island where everyone is required to be good at X, but not required to be good at Y” and “the island where everyone is required to accept norm/paradigm Z because life is short and we can’t argue about things forever”, etc.
My underlying island that I’d like to cultivate, regardless of which object level topic we’re discussing, is something like:
Accomplishing a Goal. We’re not just talking for no reason, we’re talking because we’re brainstorming ideas or figuring out how to learn the current best practices or building an understanding of something. The goal might vary, which might change some of the norms that are ideal for the job.
Leveling Up. In addition to solving an object level goal, we’re trying to grow in the process (at epistemics, at learning, at doing)
Disagreements are there to be resolved, and knowledge built upon. 10 years ago it was still a thing that I’d run into people arguing about creationism, I’m deeply glad I don’t have to worry about that in my current filter bubble, and I’d like my bubble to spend the next 10 years getting to the point where things that are current considered contentious are considered resolved. (And, to be clear, I’d like to get there by actually resolving things and people changing their minds, rather than people filtering themselves out)
I currently believe a keystone of this is that people should be striving to have belief structures that are “cruxy” – i.e. have reasons for believing the things you do, and when you encounter disagreement, attempt to resolve that disagreement so that we don’t have to hash it out over and over. (sort of a “hacker ethos” for beliefs. The hacker mentality is that problems are solvable, solutions are shareable, and no problem should have to be solved more that once).
Perhaps ironically, discussion that doesn’t try to seriously resolve disagreement feels like either politics or recreation, both of which are nice and all but not what I’m interested in LessWrong for.
(This doesn’t mean I expect disagreement to always get resolved anytime soon, just that long as it isn’t, you should have a nagging sense that your job isn’t done)
Introspection, Extrospection and Social Skills necessary for collaboration—This has some worldview baked into it that not everyone shares, and that I’m not currently sure about the framing of. I’m open to running threads that don’t assume that worldview (and certainly am up for participating in other people’s islands that don’t). But, threads that don’t assume this involve me running at a psychological deficit and will probably burn me out over time.
I expect the people I’m actively working with to be able to notice their own needs, notice the reasons for their beliefs, and be able to communicate about them in a collaborative (rather than confrontational) fashion. If you’re at a point where if something threatening to you happens, and you don’t feel like you have the social tools to deal with it non-confrontationally, I’d prefer you talk to me (or someone else you trust) about it one-on-one until you’ve gotten a handle on it.
I think my main confusion now is whether we are thinking of archipelago mainly as “fuzzy boundaries between individual authors’ preferences” or “explicitly cut-out regions built into the site” like subreddits. The former seems to be where the meta decisions are going, but the latter is what I instinctively anchored on when I heard the word archipelago.
My sense is that the first model will be unlikely to result in clear enough boundaries between islands for LW to noticeably separate. Few people (certainly not myself) have the energy and mental fortitude to tend a walled garden the way Scott does. Also, there’d be too many sets and combinations of norms and tastes to keep track of.
Meanwhile, if you end up building “subforums” or “subreddits” there really only deserve to be O(5) of them, and it will be possible to keep track of norms and values across them for authors and readers alike.
tl;dr: Moderation power is a safety blank eject button for most authors, and not an active tool we will use to actually build gardens. If this is the main meta change towards archipelago it is unlikely to work.
The former seems to be where the meta decisions are going, but the latter is what I instinctively anchored on when I heard the word archipelago.
Gotcha. There’s a different phrase we’d tossed around a bit which was “Private Fiefdoms”, which I think has more of the connotations of what the currently implementation is pointed towards.
But, the longterm goal is (most likely – plans can change a bunch in the meantime) more like a genuine archipelago where people with shared conversational goals/norms have banded together. Subreddits or what-have-you. It’s just that for the immediate future, it’s unclear what sort of islands we might coalesce into, or who trusts who to run an island.
Some random bits of my worldview here:
I think it is necessary to have a leader or small trusted council run an island.
If an island is named after a topic, that means anyone else who wants to run a space around that topic but optimized around different norms has to fight over the namespace.
A lot of what I’m trying to do is sidestep fights over overton windows. A subreddit still creates a venue to fight over, if people have subtle or not-so-subtle differences of opinion on what’s good. A newly created subreddit might created a power vacuum for people to fight over. Starting with “users-fiefdoms” first lets people get a sense of who they trust, and who they might want to join forces with to start a council.
I think if there end up being a few dominant modes of discussion, it’ll be easier to express a given user’s space as “X Norms, but with this small diff”.
Those islands you describe seem real (although “no smiles allowed” doesn’t resonate). But I think the sort of islands I’m looking for are arranged on a different axis that this.
I want to talk about AI, and Instrumental Rationality, and Questionable Practices That Might Help Your Epistemics Or Might Destroy Them, and High Adventure, and Blood for the Art God, and a bunch of other things – they all seem fairly connected to me (since I’m a person, and everything I do is connected in some way).
The Islands I’m interested in are “the island where everyone is required to be good at X, but not required to be good at Y” and “the island where everyone is required to accept norm/paradigm Z because life is short and we can’t argue about things forever”, etc.
My underlying island that I’d like to cultivate, regardless of which object level topic we’re discussing, is something like:
Accomplishing a Goal. We’re not just talking for no reason, we’re talking because we’re brainstorming ideas or figuring out how to learn the current best practices or building an understanding of something. The goal might vary, which might change some of the norms that are ideal for the job.
Leveling Up. In addition to solving an object level goal, we’re trying to grow in the process (at epistemics, at learning, at doing)
Disagreements are there to be resolved, and knowledge built upon. 10 years ago it was still a thing that I’d run into people arguing about creationism, I’m deeply glad I don’t have to worry about that in my current filter bubble, and I’d like my bubble to spend the next 10 years getting to the point where things that are current considered contentious are considered resolved. (And, to be clear, I’d like to get there by actually resolving things and people changing their minds, rather than people filtering themselves out)
I currently believe a keystone of this is that people should be striving to have belief structures that are “cruxy” – i.e. have reasons for believing the things you do, and when you encounter disagreement, attempt to resolve that disagreement so that we don’t have to hash it out over and over. (sort of a “hacker ethos” for beliefs. The hacker mentality is that problems are solvable, solutions are shareable, and no problem should have to be solved more that once).
Perhaps ironically, discussion that doesn’t try to seriously resolve disagreement feels like either politics or recreation, both of which are nice and all but not what I’m interested in LessWrong for.
(This doesn’t mean I expect disagreement to always get resolved anytime soon, just that long as it isn’t, you should have a nagging sense that your job isn’t done)
Introspection, Extrospection and Social Skills necessary for collaboration—This has some worldview baked into it that not everyone shares, and that I’m not currently sure about the framing of. I’m open to running threads that don’t assume that worldview (and certainly am up for participating in other people’s islands that don’t). But, threads that don’t assume this involve me running at a psychological deficit and will probably burn me out over time.
I expect the people I’m actively working with to be able to notice their own needs, notice the reasons for their beliefs, and be able to communicate about them in a collaborative (rather than confrontational) fashion. If you’re at a point where if something threatening to you happens, and you don’t feel like you have the social tools to deal with it non-confrontationally, I’d prefer you talk to me (or someone else you trust) about it one-on-one until you’ve gotten a handle on it.
I think my main confusion now is whether we are thinking of archipelago mainly as “fuzzy boundaries between individual authors’ preferences” or “explicitly cut-out regions built into the site” like subreddits. The former seems to be where the meta decisions are going, but the latter is what I instinctively anchored on when I heard the word archipelago.
My sense is that the first model will be unlikely to result in clear enough boundaries between islands for LW to noticeably separate. Few people (certainly not myself) have the energy and mental fortitude to tend a walled garden the way Scott does. Also, there’d be too many sets and combinations of norms and tastes to keep track of.
Meanwhile, if you end up building “subforums” or “subreddits” there really only deserve to be O(5) of them, and it will be possible to keep track of norms and values across them for authors and readers alike.
tl;dr: Moderation power is a safety blank eject button for most authors, and not an active tool we will use to actually build gardens. If this is the main meta change towards archipelago it is unlikely to work.
Gotcha. There’s a different phrase we’d tossed around a bit which was “Private Fiefdoms”, which I think has more of the connotations of what the currently implementation is pointed towards.
But, the longterm goal is (most likely – plans can change a bunch in the meantime) more like a genuine archipelago where people with shared conversational goals/norms have banded together. Subreddits or what-have-you. It’s just that for the immediate future, it’s unclear what sort of islands we might coalesce into, or who trusts who to run an island.
Some random bits of my worldview here:
I think it is necessary to have a leader or small trusted council run an island.
If an island is named after a topic, that means anyone else who wants to run a space around that topic but optimized around different norms has to fight over the namespace.
A lot of what I’m trying to do is sidestep fights over overton windows. A subreddit still creates a venue to fight over, if people have subtle or not-so-subtle differences of opinion on what’s good. A newly created subreddit might created a power vacuum for people to fight over. Starting with “users-fiefdoms” first lets people get a sense of who they trust, and who they might want to join forces with to start a council.
I think if there end up being a few dominant modes of discussion, it’ll be easier to express a given user’s space as “X Norms, but with this small diff”.