We may generally want to raise our quality bar. But, fwiw I don’t know that we’ve actually lowered the bar for student tier content. Or, idk maybe we do, but, I don’t think MATS scholars are particularly below our bar (depends on the scholar/project). Just because they’re not contributing frontier conceptual progress doesn’t mean they’re not, like, exploring an interesting corner of the world and writing up some useful stuff about it.
I mention MATS scholars because their work is structurally similar to the current generation of slop (i.e. it sorta looks like the slop is imitating entry-level mechinterp work in particular).
I don’t know that we’ve actually lowered the bar for student tier content.
Fair! Let me rephrase. LW may have historically set its quality floor low enough to permit student-tier content, because even if it’s of minor interest, it has a beneficial side effect in promoting the author’s intellectual growth and potential to contribute in a more substantial way in the future. Most content above the current quality floor reflects enough content interest and growth value to be worth accepting.
When AI slop consistently rises above that quality floor, then including it will fill LW with minor-interest slop that has no beneficial side effect of intellectual growth for the contributor. So it will become untenable to keep the floor in the same place. But LW still wants to give student-tier contributors a way to make those contributions without getting drowned out by AI slop or filtered out by a quality bar that has to keep rising to filter out the slop. The strategies I proposed are implementation ideas for that alternate submissions channel.
Is this a fair description of the problem, as you see it?
We may generally want to raise our quality bar. But, fwiw I don’t know that we’ve actually lowered the bar for student tier content. Or, idk maybe we do, but, I don’t think MATS scholars are particularly below our bar (depends on the scholar/project). Just because they’re not contributing frontier conceptual progress doesn’t mean they’re not, like, exploring an interesting corner of the world and writing up some useful stuff about it.
I mention MATS scholars because their work is structurally similar to the current generation of slop (i.e. it sorta looks like the slop is imitating entry-level mechinterp work in particular).
Fair! Let me rephrase. LW may have historically set its quality floor low enough to permit student-tier content, because even if it’s of minor interest, it has a beneficial side effect in promoting the author’s intellectual growth and potential to contribute in a more substantial way in the future. Most content above the current quality floor reflects enough content interest and growth value to be worth accepting.
When AI slop consistently rises above that quality floor, then including it will fill LW with minor-interest slop that has no beneficial side effect of intellectual growth for the contributor. So it will become untenable to keep the floor in the same place. But LW still wants to give student-tier contributors a way to make those contributions without getting drowned out by AI slop or filtered out by a quality bar that has to keep rising to filter out the slop. The strategies I proposed are implementation ideas for that alternate submissions channel.
Is this a fair description of the problem, as you see it?
Yeah that framing seems plausible, would have to think more.