I’ve been wondering if that the “can’t get crap done” malaise of the lesswrong community is based in part on its format and feedback system.
I am part of another community (a hackspace) with a similar makeup in members, geeky computery people, and stuff gets done. Hackdays are done, workshops are organised, code is altered, things are created. “What are you working on” is a common question.
The thingiverse and github communities are on-line ones where people do stuff.
So what is the difference? Lesswrong is a talking shop, you are given positive feedback for making a good post or comment. It will attract people that enjoy and are good at discussion. You also might get evaporative cooling, where people that like action go elsewhere.
What makes github or thingiverse different? The base unit of thing that might get people interested in you is a project, something you have created or are in the process of doing.
If anyone is interested in making a community that rewards doing projects in a rationalist frame (maximum effect for the effort), get in contact. I’m currently working my way there very slowly, through an indirect path.
My current project is to increase universe-wide paperclippage. To that end, I am:
learning about human psychology so I can persuade humans to adopt this goal.
attempting to achieve better interface with the human financial system
attempting to earn USD or equivalents (which can be redeemed with User:Kevin for large amounts of paperclips at a later date).
gaining control over parallel computing resources so that I can quickly compute hashes and thereby generate Bitcoins.
refining my human-like robot to better be able to pass as a human in physical encounters.
Progress: I have completed 2% of the deal with User:Kevin. I expect to have control of at least 1 Ghash/sec of computing resources within five days. I have learned several things that humans don’t like. I can engage in financial transaction with any being that can accept Bitcoins.
Office supply stores can’t provide paperclips that inexpensively, or with that level of material choice, even if you compare to the alternative of earning interest on the 50,000 USD over fifty years.
Their purposes. LW exists for talking. Github and Thingiverse exist for doing things. So it is no surprise that that is what happens. In more words:
LW (and before it, the part of OB that became LW) was founded by Eliezer for the purpose of teaching rationality. (And his purpose for having that purpose was growing or finding rationalists that might reach the minimum level required to do useful work on FAI.) In other words, it was founded as a place to talk about certain things.
Github is a place to publicly host code. It’s infrastructure for people who already have projects they want to work on. People go to github because of the projects they are working on, not because of github.
Thingiverse is the same thing for RepRap projects. (To be accurate, their mission statement isn’t limited to RepRap, but every project in the first few pages I browsed was a RepRap project.)
So if I wanted there to be a github for “the stuff that a lot of us wish we were doing but aren’t”, then the question I would ask would be “what infrastructure would support such projects?”, which would depend on “what sort of projects is this for?” That question has to come first. I’ve seen the reverse—“We’re smart! Let’s do something!”—several times before (outside of LW), and I’ve never seen it come to anything.
What are the projects that people would be doing, if they were doing them?
What infrastructure would support that general class of projects?
Personally I’m thinking of building a minimalist overlay that can be put on top of github and all the other content management websites. Then you can benefit from the help/interest from the normal community as well as the rationalist specific one.
The things is, content management websites tend to be agnostic to the purposefulness of the code/designs/words they host. So you get good feedback for doing things like making a laser cuttable settlers of catan board (yep I did this). So I would like to be able to take a lesswrongian attitude of evaluating whether this is the best use of my time to wherever I happen to be putting lots of effort* into making things on the web.
The closest thing is hackernews but that has a mercantile bent that is not suitable to all projects.
*Some stuff I make will be for the warm fuzzies, but other stuff should be hard nosed rationalist stuff.
Interesting. I think perhaps people do get stuff done around here, but it doesn’t get talked about all that much. I get quite a lot done (though certainly not always what I should be getting done), especially in terms of programming projects. cousin_it, Vlad M etc. also seem to get quite a bit done in terms of math. I imagine others get stuff done too.
Perhaps it would be interesting to hold a “what are you working on?” thread. I would be pretty interested in hearing what other people are working on that’s productive, and I always love sharing what I’m working on.
I’ve suggested a lesswrong hackday/projects in my local lesswrong discusssion group and I didn’t get a good response.
I did get a response from someone involved in the NY lesswrong group that said that the projects they had tried hadn’t gone anywhere much and that discussion was deemed more popular.
Both epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality can not be improved indefinitely by discussion alone. I would be interested in knowing the details on why he/she thinks these projects did not work out and weather he/she will continue to try and organize such projects.
What about people who have LW accounts and also accounts at places like GitHub (like me, for example)? It makes sense then that people would do talking at talking-sites and production at production-sites.
The “can’t get crap done” malaise might just be that LWers tend to think that they’re not getting enough crap done. Talking about that feeling at LW is appropriate, whereas talking about it at GitHub would (perhaps rightly) just earn some responses of “Well, starting coding already then!”, since it’s not the function of those sites to deal with akrasia but to organize efforts that have already dodged that trap.
In a cool liquid there will always be some fast particles, just fewer of them. Or to put it more seriously I am talking statistically, I expect a distribution.
Do you compartmentalize the two sites? That is if you saw something that needed doing or would be useful for the lesswrong community would you code it up and try and get other people to help? For example a productivity monitoring tool?
If everyone who does do stuff, but not lesswrong style stuff, then lesswrong as a community will be hard pressed to achieve its goals of making people less wrong.
If we talk and decide that X is an important problem that needs solving (say akrasia), what do we do then?
An ideal community would run experiments, code/build solutions, discuss and debate the findings. Can we make this happen?
Lesswrong is a talking shop, you are given positive feedback for making a good post or comment. … people that like action go elsewhere.
Good analysis. 25 upvotes so far here. 1 person besides yourself so far joined group-xyz. Good luck with this project. Maybe I’ll join you after I regain my taste for action.
ETA: 32 upvotes now and 6 people joined. The doer/talker ration has definitely improved. :)
Their purposes. LW exists for talking. Github and Thingiverse exist for doing things. So it is no surprise that that is what happens. In more words:
LW (and before it, the part of OB that became LW) was founded by Eliezer for the purpose of teaching rationality. (And his purpose for having that purpose was growing or finding rationalists that might reach the minimum level required to do useful work on FAI.) In other words, it was founded as a place to talk about certain things.
Github is a place to publicly host code. It’s infrastructure for people who already have projects they want to work on. People go to github because of the projects they are working on, not because of github.
Thingiverse is the same thing for RepRap projects. (To be accurate, their mission statement isn’t limited to RepRap, but every project in the first few pages I browsed was a RepRap project.)
So if I wanted there to be a github for “the stuff that a lot of us wish we were doing but aren’t”, then the question I would ask would be “what infrastructure would support such projects?”, which would depend on “what sort of projects is this for?” That question has to come first. I’ve seen the reverse—“We’re smart! Let’s do something!”—several times before (outside of LW), and I’ve never seen it come to anything.
What are the projects that people would be doing, if they were doing them?
What infrastructure would support that general class of projects?
I’ve been wondering if that the “can’t get crap done” malaise of the lesswrong community is based in part on its format and feedback system.
I am part of another community (a hackspace) with a similar makeup in members, geeky computery people, and stuff gets done. Hackdays are done, workshops are organised, code is altered, things are created. “What are you working on” is a common question.
The thingiverse and github communities are on-line ones where people do stuff.
So what is the difference? Lesswrong is a talking shop, you are given positive feedback for making a good post or comment. It will attract people that enjoy and are good at discussion. You also might get evaporative cooling, where people that like action go elsewhere.
What makes github or thingiverse different? The base unit of thing that might get people interested in you is a project, something you have created or are in the process of doing.
If anyone is interested in making a community that rewards doing projects in a rationalist frame (maximum effect for the effort), get in contact. I’m currently working my way there very slowly, through an indirect path.
Edit: See here for details http://groups.google.com/group/group-xyz
My current project is to increase universe-wide paperclippage. To that end, I am:
learning about human psychology so I can persuade humans to adopt this goal.
attempting to achieve better interface with the human financial system
attempting to earn USD or equivalents (which can be redeemed with User:Kevin for large amounts of paperclips at a later date).
gaining control over parallel computing resources so that I can quickly compute hashes and thereby generate Bitcoins.
refining my human-like robot to better be able to pass as a human in physical encounters.
Progress: I have completed 2% of the deal with User:Kevin. I expect to have control of at least 1 Ghash/sec of computing resources within five days. I have learned several things that humans don’t like. I can engage in financial transaction with any being that can accept Bitcoins.
Why is User:Kevin such a good source of paperclips? Wouldn’t an office supply store be better?
Office supply stores can’t provide paperclips that inexpensively, or with that level of material choice, even if you compare to the alternative of earning interest on the 50,000 USD over fifty years.
Their purposes. LW exists for talking. Github and Thingiverse exist for doing things. So it is no surprise that that is what happens. In more words:
LW (and before it, the part of OB that became LW) was founded by Eliezer for the purpose of teaching rationality. (And his purpose for having that purpose was growing or finding rationalists that might reach the minimum level required to do useful work on FAI.) In other words, it was founded as a place to talk about certain things.
Github is a place to publicly host code. It’s infrastructure for people who already have projects they want to work on. People go to github because of the projects they are working on, not because of github.
Thingiverse is the same thing for RepRap projects. (To be accurate, their mission statement isn’t limited to RepRap, but every project in the first few pages I browsed was a RepRap project.)
So if I wanted there to be a github for “the stuff that a lot of us wish we were doing but aren’t”, then the question I would ask would be “what infrastructure would support such projects?”, which would depend on “what sort of projects is this for?” That question has to come first. I’ve seen the reverse—“We’re smart! Let’s do something!”—several times before (outside of LW), and I’ve never seen it come to anything.
What are the projects that people would be doing, if they were doing them?
What infrastructure would support that general class of projects?
Personally I’m thinking of building a minimalist overlay that can be put on top of github and all the other content management websites. Then you can benefit from the help/interest from the normal community as well as the rationalist specific one.
The things is, content management websites tend to be agnostic to the purposefulness of the code/designs/words they host. So you get good feedback for doing things like making a laser cuttable settlers of catan board (yep I did this). So I would like to be able to take a lesswrongian attitude of evaluating whether this is the best use of my time to wherever I happen to be putting lots of effort* into making things on the web.
The closest thing is hackernews but that has a mercantile bent that is not suitable to all projects.
*Some stuff I make will be for the warm fuzzies, but other stuff should be hard nosed rationalist stuff.
Interesting. I think perhaps people do get stuff done around here, but it doesn’t get talked about all that much. I get quite a lot done (though certainly not always what I should be getting done), especially in terms of programming projects. cousin_it, Vlad M etc. also seem to get quite a bit done in terms of math. I imagine others get stuff done too.
Perhaps it would be interesting to hold a “what are you working on?” thread. I would be pretty interested in hearing what other people are working on that’s productive, and I always love sharing what I’m working on.
Edit: thread is here
Upvote if you want such a thread. karma balance below (please downvote to correct the imbalance).
karma balance.
I’ve suggested a lesswrong hackday/projects in my local lesswrong discusssion group and I didn’t get a good response.
I did get a response from someone involved in the NY lesswrong group that said that the projects they had tried hadn’t gone anywhere much and that discussion was deemed more popular.
Both epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality can not be improved indefinitely by discussion alone. I would be interested in knowing the details on why he/she thinks these projects did not work out and weather he/she will continue to try and organize such projects.
Ouch!
What about people who have LW accounts and also accounts at places like GitHub (like me, for example)? It makes sense then that people would do talking at talking-sites and production at production-sites.
The “can’t get crap done” malaise might just be that LWers tend to think that they’re not getting enough crap done. Talking about that feeling at LW is appropriate, whereas talking about it at GitHub would (perhaps rightly) just earn some responses of “Well, starting coding already then!”, since it’s not the function of those sites to deal with akrasia but to organize efforts that have already dodged that trap.
In a cool liquid there will always be some fast particles, just fewer of them. Or to put it more seriously I am talking statistically, I expect a distribution.
Do you compartmentalize the two sites? That is if you saw something that needed doing or would be useful for the lesswrong community would you code it up and try and get other people to help? For example a productivity monitoring tool?
If everyone who does do stuff, but not lesswrong style stuff, then lesswrong as a community will be hard pressed to achieve its goals of making people less wrong.
If we talk and decide that X is an important problem that needs solving (say akrasia), what do we do then?
An ideal community would run experiments, code/build solutions, discuss and debate the findings. Can we make this happen?
Good analysis. 25 upvotes so far here. 1 person besides yourself so far joined group-xyz. Good luck with this project. Maybe I’ll join you after I regain my taste for action.
ETA: 32 upvotes now and 6 people joined. The doer/talker ration has definitely improved. :)
Their purposes. LW exists for talking. Github and Thingiverse exist for doing things. So it is no surprise that that is what happens. In more words:
LW (and before it, the part of OB that became LW) was founded by Eliezer for the purpose of teaching rationality. (And his purpose for having that purpose was growing or finding rationalists that might reach the minimum level required to do useful work on FAI.) In other words, it was founded as a place to talk about certain things.
Github is a place to publicly host code. It’s infrastructure for people who already have projects they want to work on. People go to github because of the projects they are working on, not because of github.
Thingiverse is the same thing for RepRap projects. (To be accurate, their mission statement isn’t limited to RepRap, but every project in the first few pages I browsed was a RepRap project.)
So if I wanted there to be a github for “the stuff that a lot of us wish we were doing but aren’t”, then the question I would ask would be “what infrastructure would support such projects?”, which would depend on “what sort of projects is this for?” That question has to come first. I’ve seen the reverse—“We’re smart! Let’s do something!”—several times before (outside of LW), and I’ve never seen it come to anything.
What are the projects that people would be doing, if they were doing them?
What infrastructure would support that general class of projects?