I like RationalWiki and try to write reasonable stuff there. (Particularly pleased with this one, which I just got to a silver rating.) That said, it really rubs some people up the wrong way. It’s a skeptics’ wiki and snarky as hell. It’s made of flaws and the flaws are people.
The important things to remember are:
RationalWiki is a silly wiki of no import in the wider world. It doesn’t pretend otherwise. It’s mostly read by its writers.
The only reason anyone on LessWrong has noticed its existence is that it’s one of the extremely few places that anyone has bothered writing about LessWrong.
The LessWrong article on RW is doing the job EY pointed out it would, i.e. luring us over here.
Taking something seriously just because it pays you attention may not be a good idea.
(I’m somewhat disconcerted that this quickly dashed off comment is so popular, given the several comments I made yesterday that I thought were quite important and worked hard on. Goldman’s Law applies.)
It is possible LessWrong is feeling the effects of too little outside feedback. The HP:MOR readers are drifting in. Would a publicity push for LessWrong be appropriate, to get it better feedback and make the Wikipedia link not just a redirect to EY’s article? What approach would best refine the art of human rationality?
(Related exercise for Wikipedians reading: WIkipedia put pretty much no effort into publicity or popularity, stumbled along with little or no outside feedback and suddenly found itself ridiculously famous and, indeed, mainstream. Was developing for a few years with no feedback a good idea? Should LessWrong ignore outside discussion in the same manner? Are there approaches Wikipedia could have reasonably taken that would have arguably worked out better? I’ve been in the guts of Wikipedia since 2004 and I have no damn idea. Over to you.)
Weird how hastily dashed off comments and posts frequently end up making more sense to more people than ones you put a lot of thought into.
One explanation that leaps to mind for this would be inferential distance. More time spent composing it could mean you are following more inferential links, some of which are unfamiliar or have a weaker relationship in the mind of the audience. Quickly made posts would tend to have shorter chains of reasoning, hence seem immediately stronger.
That sounds a bit just-so. Looking back through my comments, the “important” ones seem to have ended up grammatically contorted by the quest for robust precision.
Sure, but points involving longer inferential chains would be harder to write as succinctly. It could be that the problem isn’t writing skill, just the thoughts aren’t as easy to write.
Did Wikipedia really have no outside feedback? After all, it had a regular influx of new editors … I don’t really see what other kind of “outside feedback” you would have wanted to happen—it’s not as if there was a lot of people with experience on how to make a wiki work (a lot of those that did—c2 and MeatballWiki people—were already aware of and involved with wikipedia).
(I’ve also been on Wikipedia since 2004 (though not really ‘in the guts’, though I was involved in a few disputes), and was on MeatballWiki before that)
As late as 2004, people were still working out how to write an encyclopedia from first principles. There was not sufficient popularity to provide feedback as to how Wikipedia was doing in terms of usefulness to ordinary people, and how, or even whether, this would be widely useful. People were still thinking in terms of using the website as raw material for a finished product, and that finished product would be the real point.
Around 2005 it hit the twenties in Alexa and my phone started ringing a lot …
Now? I see advertisements in Tube stations advertising something as “THE WIKIPEDIA OF …” I forget what it was. But this was a poster on the wall of a subway station advertising to the general populace. How did we get here?
And the key point is that Wikipedia didn’t have any particular outside feedback until it was already famous. Probably the first bit that really brought home that there was a real world out there was the Siegenthaler incident. Until then I think we really were flying more or less blind, while even internally the quality control was based on theoretical considerations of what an encyclopedia might look like, rather than anything the end readers were actually using it for or its effects in the world.
I’m not sure it’s actually useful to compare Wikipedia’s trajectory to LessWrong, I’m more wondering if there’s comparable ideas based on LessWrong having almost no outside feedback. RationalWiki really doesn’t count. We’re idiots (though eloquent ones) writing for our own amusement. But it will be interesting to see the effect of the Harry Potter fans coming in.
Has anyone compiled a timeline of LessWrong as yet?
And the key point is that Wikipedia didn’t have any particular outside feedback until it was already famous. Probably the first bit that really brought home that there was a real world out there was the Siegenthaler incident. Until then I think we really were flying more or less blind, while even internally the quality control was based on theoretical considerations of what an encyclopedia might look like, rather than anything the end readers were actually using it for or its effects in the world.
But what should that outside feedback have looked like? People talking about what they used Wikipedia for? I’m sure there was plenty of that on blogs. A committee of experts coming over and giving advice?
I can’t really imagine what kind of “outside feedback” would have changed Wikipedia’s trajectory—I don’t see what would have increased the “group rationality” of Wikipedia editors that they didn’t already have. Academics involved? check. People thinking hard about how to organize that thing? check. New people coming in with a new perspective? check.
Now, Wikipedia’s history could have varied with some internal changes—say policies on handling disputes, on anonymous editors, a clearer vision of Wikipedia “not as a scratch pad but as the final product”, etc. - but none of those seem more likely to be introduced by “outside feedback”.
Yeah, the idea of what I might be asking for is somewhat inchoate. I think I’m still shocked at Wikipedia getting a lot of outside feedback at all—actually becoming famous, then going beyond that to an assumed part of life. What? How on earth?
To bring it back to on-topicality, where is LessWrong now? It’s gaining participants slowly. What’s the aim? “Refine the art of human rationality.” How would that scale if readership doubled tomorrow? What would happen if LW got famous? How could that occur? What function would the site have?
I only read/participate in lesswrong, and I still hate it. It feels ugly and neurotic in here.
Maybe it’s just that I see reflections of my own ugly neuroses.
I like RationalWiki and try to write reasonable stuff there. (Particularly pleased with this one, which I just got to a silver rating.) That said, it really rubs some people up the wrong way. It’s a skeptics’ wiki and snarky as hell. It’s made of flaws and the flaws are people.
The important things to remember are:
RationalWiki is a silly wiki of no import in the wider world. It doesn’t pretend otherwise. It’s mostly read by its writers.
The only reason anyone on LessWrong has noticed its existence is that it’s one of the extremely few places that anyone has bothered writing about LessWrong.
The LessWrong article on RW is doing the job EY pointed out it would, i.e. luring us over here.
Taking something seriously just because it pays you attention may not be a good idea.
Upvoted for “Taking something seriously just because it pays you attention may not be a good idea.”
Yes. Even if, as is the case, RW loves LW really.
(I’m somewhat disconcerted that this quickly dashed off comment is so popular, given the several comments I made yesterday that I thought were quite important and worked hard on. Goldman’s Law applies.)
It is possible LessWrong is feeling the effects of too little outside feedback. The HP:MOR readers are drifting in. Would a publicity push for LessWrong be appropriate, to get it better feedback and make the Wikipedia link not just a redirect to EY’s article? What approach would best refine the art of human rationality?
(Related exercise for Wikipedians reading: WIkipedia put pretty much no effort into publicity or popularity, stumbled along with little or no outside feedback and suddenly found itself ridiculously famous and, indeed, mainstream. Was developing for a few years with no feedback a good idea? Should LessWrong ignore outside discussion in the same manner? Are there approaches Wikipedia could have reasonably taken that would have arguably worked out better? I’ve been in the guts of Wikipedia since 2004 and I have no damn idea. Over to you.)
Weird how hastily dashed off comments and posts frequently end up making more sense to more people than ones you put a lot of thought into.
One explanation that leaps to mind for this would be inferential distance. More time spent composing it could mean you are following more inferential links, some of which are unfamiliar or have a weaker relationship in the mind of the audience. Quickly made posts would tend to have shorter chains of reasoning, hence seem immediately stronger.
That sounds a bit just-so. Looking back through my comments, the “important” ones seem to have ended up grammatically contorted by the quest for robust precision.
Answer: work out how to write better.
Sure, but points involving longer inferential chains would be harder to write as succinctly. It could be that the problem isn’t writing skill, just the thoughts aren’t as easy to write.
Did Wikipedia really have no outside feedback? After all, it had a regular influx of new editors … I don’t really see what other kind of “outside feedback” you would have wanted to happen—it’s not as if there was a lot of people with experience on how to make a wiki work (a lot of those that did—c2 and MeatballWiki people—were already aware of and involved with wikipedia).
(I’ve also been on Wikipedia since 2004 (though not really ‘in the guts’, though I was involved in a few disputes), and was on MeatballWiki before that)
As late as 2004, people were still working out how to write an encyclopedia from first principles. There was not sufficient popularity to provide feedback as to how Wikipedia was doing in terms of usefulness to ordinary people, and how, or even whether, this would be widely useful. People were still thinking in terms of using the website as raw material for a finished product, and that finished product would be the real point.
Around 2005 it hit the twenties in Alexa and my phone started ringing a lot …
Now? I see advertisements in Tube stations advertising something as “THE WIKIPEDIA OF …” I forget what it was. But this was a poster on the wall of a subway station advertising to the general populace. How did we get here?
And the key point is that Wikipedia didn’t have any particular outside feedback until it was already famous. Probably the first bit that really brought home that there was a real world out there was the Siegenthaler incident. Until then I think we really were flying more or less blind, while even internally the quality control was based on theoretical considerations of what an encyclopedia might look like, rather than anything the end readers were actually using it for or its effects in the world.
I’m not sure it’s actually useful to compare Wikipedia’s trajectory to LessWrong, I’m more wondering if there’s comparable ideas based on LessWrong having almost no outside feedback. RationalWiki really doesn’t count. We’re idiots (though eloquent ones) writing for our own amusement. But it will be interesting to see the effect of the Harry Potter fans coming in.
Has anyone compiled a timeline of LessWrong as yet?
But what should that outside feedback have looked like? People talking about what they used Wikipedia for? I’m sure there was plenty of that on blogs. A committee of experts coming over and giving advice?
I can’t really imagine what kind of “outside feedback” would have changed Wikipedia’s trajectory—I don’t see what would have increased the “group rationality” of Wikipedia editors that they didn’t already have. Academics involved? check. People thinking hard about how to organize that thing? check. New people coming in with a new perspective? check.
Now, Wikipedia’s history could have varied with some internal changes—say policies on handling disputes, on anonymous editors, a clearer vision of Wikipedia “not as a scratch pad but as the final product”, etc. - but none of those seem more likely to be introduced by “outside feedback”.
Yeah, the idea of what I might be asking for is somewhat inchoate. I think I’m still shocked at Wikipedia getting a lot of outside feedback at all—actually becoming famous, then going beyond that to an assumed part of life. What? How on earth?
To bring it back to on-topicality, where is LessWrong now? It’s gaining participants slowly. What’s the aim? “Refine the art of human rationality.” How would that scale if readership doubled tomorrow? What would happen if LW got famous? How could that occur? What function would the site have?