(I do appreciate the attempt at trying to bridge the epistemic gap, but just to be clear, this does not capture the relevant dimensions in my mind. The culture I want on LessWrong is highly competitive in many ways.
I care a lot about having standards and striving in intense ways for the site. I just don’t think the way Said does it really produces that, and instead think it mostly produces lots of people getting angry at each other while exacerbating tribal dynamics.
The situation seems more similar to having a competitive team where anyone gets screamed at for basically any motion, with a coach who doesn’t themselves perform the sport, but just complaints in long tirades any time anyone does anything, making references to methods of practice and training long-outdated, with a constant air of superiority. This is indeed a common error mode for competitive sports teams, but the right response to that is not to not have standards, it’s to have good standards and to most importantly have some functional way of updating the standards.)
So you want a culture of competing with each other while pushing each other up, instead of competing with each other while pushing each other down. Is that a fair (high-level, abstract) summary?
I think there is something in the space, but I wouldn’t speak in absolutes this way. I think many bad things deserve to be pushed down. I just don’t think Said has a great track record of pushing down the right things, and the resulting discussions seem to me to reliably produce misunderstandings and confusions.
I think a major thing that I do not like is “sneering”. Going into the cultural context of sneering and why it happens and how it propagates itself is a bit much for this comment thread, but a lot of what I experience from Said is that kind of sneering culture, which interfaces with having standards, but not in a super clear directional way.
(I do appreciate the attempt at trying to bridge the epistemic gap, but just to be clear, this does not capture the relevant dimensions in my mind. The culture I want on LessWrong is highly competitive in many ways.
I care a lot about having standards and striving in intense ways for the site. I just don’t think the way Said does it really produces that, and instead think it mostly produces lots of people getting angry at each other while exacerbating tribal dynamics.
The situation seems more similar to having a competitive team where anyone gets screamed at for basically any motion, with a coach who doesn’t themselves perform the sport, but just complaints in long tirades any time anyone does anything, making references to methods of practice and training long-outdated, with a constant air of superiority. This is indeed a common error mode for competitive sports teams, but the right response to that is not to not have standards, it’s to have good standards and to most importantly have some functional way of updating the standards.)
So you want a culture of competing with each other while pushing each other up, instead of competing with each other while pushing each other down. Is that a fair (high-level, abstract) summary?
I think there is something in the space, but I wouldn’t speak in absolutes this way. I think many bad things deserve to be pushed down. I just don’t think Said has a great track record of pushing down the right things, and the resulting discussions seem to me to reliably produce misunderstandings and confusions.
I think a major thing that I do not like is “sneering”. Going into the cultural context of sneering and why it happens and how it propagates itself is a bit much for this comment thread, but a lot of what I experience from Said is that kind of sneering culture, which interfaces with having standards, but not in a super clear directional way.