Because of overlaps and ambiguity, I wouldn’t feel confident choosing a subreddit for a lot of posts I could see myself writing. And I think I’ve gained a pretty good understanding of most of the categories people have proposed. Someone newer to the site would probably be strongly discouraged from posting by having to figure out which of these arcane categories they belong in. I think that’s a bug and not a feature; the kind of new person we want to discourage is the kind who’s less thoughtful and cautious about categorization dilemmas.
I think shminux’s idea of having ‘moderated tags’, and some easy method for seeing only the tag combinations you’re interested in, is clearly superior to having ordinary subreddits. It’s just too difficult to decide where best to place things, when you have to pick exactly one category. Meetups might be subredditable, but I don’t think it really matters, whereas topic-based tags could have a very big impact on the site’s interface. My suggestion would be to use these six topics to organize the site’s content:
mathematics: logic, model theory, proof theory, programming, physics. The formal sciences in their more technical, pure, or distanced-from-the-human-condition manifestations. How can we more precisely formalize our general world-view and decision criteria? How can we preserve such formalizations across iterated modifications by the modified algorithm?
rationality theory: economic theory, game theory, decision theory, probability theory, epistemology, bounded rationality and cognitive biases. Relatively abstract discussion of idealized decisions and beliefs. Preferences (mostly) aside, how would an optimal agent behave? And why do humans fall short of these agent-neutral ideals?
value theory: meta-ethics, normative ethics, fun theory, aesthetics, moral psychology, psychology of motivation. Discussion of the nature of human preference. What makes something a preference of ours, how can we determine this, and what features distinguish human values from other possible values?
altruism: human rights initiatives, animal rights initiatives, charity evaluation, moral psychology (applied). Applied ethics and economic aid interventions. How can we most efficiently concretely benefit humanity? What specific projects deserve the most attention, and how can we get more people to attend to them?
self-improvement: decision theory (applied), probability theory (applied), cognitive biases literature (applied), productivity experiments. Original research and applied scientific discoveries for individual growth. How can we best combat our own biases, ignorance, and general deficits of fun and achievement?
future studies: projection, risk assessment, life extension, technology news. What major events will happen in the near and far future?
There could then be two more categories, ‘Promoted’ and ‘All’, and a feature for customizing a feed of just the tag combinations you want to do and don’t want to see. I think 6 or so topics is a good compromise between the virtues of lumping and splitting, and these are probably the most natural large breakdowns between LessWrong topics that wouldn’t require a philospohy degree to understand. Other topics I considered, but currently don’t think we should add (as ‘canonical’, closely monitored and hosted on the main page):
introductory: Stuff that’s intended to be useful and accessible to laypeople outside LessWrong.
education / outreach: Like ‘introductory’, but more meta.
technical: Stuff that’s expected to not be useful to people without some interest and/or expertise in formalisms. Lots of easy math, or a fair amount of hard math, without very much to be gained by skimming the English.
off-topic / community: Miscellaneous. The stuff that shows up in ‘all’ but isn’t in another category.
education / outreach
physics and cosmology: Doesn’t seem like a topic LW is super committed to focusing on, so I imagined mostly confining this to Mathematics. Some stuff, e.g. on the Great Filter, may belong in Future Studies.
What do you think? I could categorize LW’s most recent posts on this system and see what the test run would look like.
Because of overlaps and ambiguity, I wouldn’t feel confident choosing a subreddit for a lot of posts I could see myself writing. And I think I’ve gained a pretty good understanding of most of the categories people have proposed. Someone newer to the site would probably be strongly discouraged from posting by having to figure out which of these arcane categories they belong in. I think that’s a bug and not a feature; the kind of new person we want to discourage is the kind who’s less thoughtful and cautious about categorization dilemmas.
I think shminux’s idea of having ‘moderated tags’, and some easy method for seeing only the tag combinations you’re interested in, is clearly superior to having ordinary subreddits. It’s just too difficult to decide where best to place things, when you have to pick exactly one category. Meetups might be subredditable, but I don’t think it really matters, whereas topic-based tags could have a very big impact on the site’s interface. My suggestion would be to use these six topics to organize the site’s content:
mathematics: logic, model theory, proof theory, programming, physics. The formal sciences in their more technical, pure, or distanced-from-the-human-condition manifestations. How can we more precisely formalize our general world-view and decision criteria? How can we preserve such formalizations across iterated modifications by the modified algorithm?
rationality theory: economic theory, game theory, decision theory, probability theory, epistemology, bounded rationality and cognitive biases. Relatively abstract discussion of idealized decisions and beliefs. Preferences (mostly) aside, how would an optimal agent behave? And why do humans fall short of these agent-neutral ideals?
value theory: meta-ethics, normative ethics, fun theory, aesthetics, moral psychology, psychology of motivation. Discussion of the nature of human preference. What makes something a preference of ours, how can we determine this, and what features distinguish human values from other possible values?
altruism: human rights initiatives, animal rights initiatives, charity evaluation, moral psychology (applied). Applied ethics and economic aid interventions. How can we most efficiently concretely benefit humanity? What specific projects deserve the most attention, and how can we get more people to attend to them?
self-improvement: decision theory (applied), probability theory (applied), cognitive biases literature (applied), productivity experiments. Original research and applied scientific discoveries for individual growth. How can we best combat our own biases, ignorance, and general deficits of fun and achievement?
future studies: projection, risk assessment, life extension, technology news. What major events will happen in the near and far future?
There could then be two more categories, ‘Promoted’ and ‘All’, and a feature for customizing a feed of just the tag combinations you want to do and don’t want to see. I think 6 or so topics is a good compromise between the virtues of lumping and splitting, and these are probably the most natural large breakdowns between LessWrong topics that wouldn’t require a philospohy degree to understand. Other topics I considered, but currently don’t think we should add (as ‘canonical’, closely monitored and hosted on the main page):
introductory: Stuff that’s intended to be useful and accessible to laypeople outside LessWrong.
education / outreach: Like ‘introductory’, but more meta.
technical: Stuff that’s expected to not be useful to people without some interest and/or expertise in formalisms. Lots of easy math, or a fair amount of hard math, without very much to be gained by skimming the English.
off-topic / community: Miscellaneous. The stuff that shows up in ‘all’ but isn’t in another category.
education / outreach
physics and cosmology: Doesn’t seem like a topic LW is super committed to focusing on, so I imagined mostly confining this to Mathematics. Some stuff, e.g. on the Great Filter, may belong in Future Studies.
What do you think? I could categorize LW’s most recent posts on this system and see what the test run would look like.