Felt like I got to understand myself a bit better, got exposed to a variety of arguments I never would have anticipated, forced to clarify my own thoughts and implications, did some math, did some sanity-check math on “what’s the value of destroying some of Ben Pace’s faith in humanity” (higher than any reasonable dollar amount alone, incidentally — and that’s just one variable)… and yeah, this was really cool and legit innovative.
We should make sure the word about this gets out more.
We need more people on LessWrong, and more stuff like this.
People thinking this is just a chat board should think a little bigger. There’s some real visionary thinking going on here, and an exceptionally smart and thoughtful community. I’m really grateful I got to see and participate in this. Thanks for all the great work — and for trusting me. Seriously. Y’all are aces.
You know what, I think LessWrong has collectively been worth more than $1,672 to me — especially after the re-launch. Heck, maybe even Petrov Day alone was. Incredibly insightful and potentially important.
I’d do this privately, but Eliezer wrote that story about how the pro-social people are too quiet and don’t announce it. So yeah, I’m in for $1,672. Obviously, I wouldn’t have done this if some knucklehead had nuked the site.
Now for the key question —
What kind of numbers do we need to put together to get another Ben Pace quality dev on the team? (And don’t tell us it’s priceless, people were willing to sell out your faith in humanity for less than the price of a Macbook Air! ;)
And yeah, mechanics for donating to LW specifically? Can follow up on email but I imagine it’d be good to have in this thread.
Edit: Before anyone suggests I donate to some highly-ranked charity, after I’d had some success in business I was in the nonprofit world for years and always 100% volunteer, have spent an immense amount of hours both understanding the space and getting things done, and was reasonably effective though not legendarily so or anything. By my quick back of the envelope math, I imagine any given large country’s State Department would have paid $50,000 to $100,000 to have Petrov Day happen successfully in such a public way. Large corporations — I’ve worked with a few — maybe double that range. It was a really important thing and while “budget for hiring developers on a site that facilitates discussion of rationality” has far more nebulous and hard-to-pin-down value than some very worthy projects, it’s first a threshold-break thing where a little more might produce much more results, and I think this site can be really important. If I might suggest something, though, perhaps an 80⁄20 eng-driven growth plan for the site that prioritizes preserving quality and norms would also make sense? We should have 10x the people here. It’s very doable. I’m really busy but happy to help if I can. I think a lot of us would be happy to help make it happen if y’all would make it a little easier to know how. Something special is happening here.
Edit2: Okay, my donation is now conditional on banning whoever downvoted this ;) - just kidding. But man, what a strange mix of really great people and total idiots here huh? “I liked this a lot and I’d like to give money.” WTF who does this guy think he is. Oh, me? Just someone trying to support the really fucking cool thing that’s happening and asking for the logistics of doing so to be posted in case anyone else thinks it’s been really cool and great for their life.
LessWrong is sponsored by CFAR, so if you just make a donation to CFAR and earmark it for the LessWrong project it will show up in our bank accounts. For anything larger than a few hundred dollars it’s probably best to send me an email at oliver.habryka@gmail.com and then figure out the details from there.
For smaller donations just using the CFAR PayPal, with a note saying it’s for the LessWrong project, and also sending me a small email to make sure it ends up in the right accounts is likely the best thing to do.
What an incredible experience.
Felt like I got to understand myself a bit better, got exposed to a variety of arguments I never would have anticipated, forced to clarify my own thoughts and implications, did some math, did some sanity-check math on “what’s the value of destroying some of Ben Pace’s faith in humanity” (higher than any reasonable dollar amount alone, incidentally — and that’s just one variable)… and yeah, this was really cool and legit innovative.
We should make sure the word about this gets out more.
We need more people on LessWrong, and more stuff like this.
People thinking this is just a chat board should think a little bigger. There’s some real visionary thinking going on here, and an exceptionally smart and thoughtful community. I’m really grateful I got to see and participate in this. Thanks for all the great work — and for trusting me. Seriously. Y’all are aces.
You know what, I think LessWrong has collectively been worth more than $1,672 to me — especially after the re-launch. Heck, maybe even Petrov Day alone was. Incredibly insightful and potentially important.
I’d do this privately, but Eliezer wrote that story about how the pro-social people are too quiet and don’t announce it. So yeah, I’m in for $1,672. Obviously, I wouldn’t have done this if some knucklehead had nuked the site.
Now for the key question —
What kind of numbers do we need to put together to get another Ben Pace quality dev on the team? (And don’t tell us it’s priceless, people were willing to sell out your faith in humanity for less than the price of a Macbook Air! ;)
And yeah, mechanics for donating to LW specifically? Can follow up on email but I imagine it’d be good to have in this thread.
Edit: Before anyone suggests I donate to some highly-ranked charity, after I’d had some success in business I was in the nonprofit world for years and always 100% volunteer, have spent an immense amount of hours both understanding the space and getting things done, and was reasonably effective though not legendarily so or anything. By my quick back of the envelope math, I imagine any given large country’s State Department would have paid $50,000 to $100,000 to have Petrov Day happen successfully in such a public way. Large corporations — I’ve worked with a few — maybe double that range. It was a really important thing and while “budget for hiring developers on a site that facilitates discussion of rationality” has far more nebulous and hard-to-pin-down value than some very worthy projects, it’s first a threshold-break thing where a little more might produce much more results, and I think this site can be really important. If I might suggest something, though, perhaps an 80⁄20 eng-driven growth plan for the site that prioritizes preserving quality and norms would also make sense? We should have 10x the people here. It’s very doable. I’m really busy but happy to help if I can. I think a lot of us would be happy to help make it happen if y’all would make it a little easier to know how. Something special is happening here.
Edit2: Okay, my donation is now conditional on banning whoever downvoted this ;) - just kidding. But man, what a strange mix of really great people and total idiots here huh? “I liked this a lot and I’d like to give money.” WTF who does this guy think he is. Oh, me? Just someone trying to support the really fucking cool thing that’s happening and asking for the logistics of doing so to be posted in case anyone else thinks it’s been really cool and great for their life.
Mechanics for donating to LessWrong:
LessWrong is sponsored by CFAR, so if you just make a donation to CFAR and earmark it for the LessWrong project it will show up in our bank accounts. For anything larger than a few hundred dollars it’s probably best to send me an email at oliver.habryka@gmail.com and then figure out the details from there.
For smaller donations just using the CFAR PayPal, with a note saying it’s for the LessWrong project, and also sending me a small email to make sure it ends up in the right accounts is likely the best thing to do.
Please don’t let a downvote or two discourage you. I appreciate your participation here, including these comments :)