What are the actual rationality concepts LWers are basically required to understand to participate in most discussions?
I am prior to having this bar be set pretty high, like 80-100% of the sequences level. I remember years ago when I finished the sequences, I spent several months practicing everyday rationality in isolation, and only then deigned to visit LessWrong and talk to other rationalists, and I was pretty disappointed with the average quality level, and like I dodged a bullet by spending those months thinking alone rather than with the wider community.
It also seems like average quality has decreased over the years.
Predictable confusion some will have: I’m talking about average quality here. Not 90th percentile quality posters.
I think I’d prefer setting the bar lower, and instead using downvotes as a filter for merely low-quality (rather than abysmal-quality) content. For instance, most posts on LW receive almost no comments, so I’d suspect that filtering for even higher quality would just dry up the discussion even more.
The main reason I don’t reply to most posts is because I’m not guaranteed an interesting conversation, and it is not uncommon that I’d just be explaining a concept which seems obvious if you’ve read the sequences, which aren’t super fun conversations to have compared to alternative uses of my time.
For example, the other day I got into a discussion on LessWrong about whether I should worry about claims which are provably useless, and was accused of ignoring inconvenient truths for not doing so.
If the bar to entry was a lot higher, I think I’d comment more (and I think others would too, like TurnTrout).
Maybe we have different experiences because we tend to read different LW content? I skip most of the AI content, so I don’t have a great sense of the quality of comments there. If most AI discussions get a healthy amount of comments, but those comments are mostly noise, then I can certainly understand your perspective.
Agreed. I think this also trends exponentially with the number of terrible comments. It is possible to be overwhelmed to death and have to completely relocate/start over (without proper prevention).
One thing that I think in the long term might be worth considering is something like the SomethingAwful approach: a one-time payment per account that is high enough to discourage trolls but low enough for most anyone to afford in combination with a strong culture and moderation (something LessWrong already has/is working on).
I am prior to having this bar be set pretty high, like 80-100% of the sequences level. I remember years ago when I finished the sequences, I spent several months practicing everyday rationality in isolation, and only then deigned to visit LessWrong and talk to other rationalists, and I was pretty disappointed with the average quality level, and like I dodged a bullet by spending those months thinking alone rather than with the wider community.
It also seems like average quality has decreased over the years.
Predictable confusion some will have: I’m talking about average quality here. Not 90th percentile quality posters.
I think I’d prefer setting the bar lower, and instead using downvotes as a filter for merely low-quality (rather than abysmal-quality) content. For instance, most posts on LW receive almost no comments, so I’d suspect that filtering for even higher quality would just dry up the discussion even more.
The main reason I don’t reply to most posts is because I’m not guaranteed an interesting conversation, and it is not uncommon that I’d just be explaining a concept which seems obvious if you’ve read the sequences, which aren’t super fun conversations to have compared to alternative uses of my time.
For example, the other day I got into a discussion on LessWrong about whether I should worry about claims which are provably useless, and was accused of ignoring inconvenient truths for not doing so.
If the bar to entry was a lot higher, I think I’d comment more (and I think others would too, like TurnTrout).
Maybe we have different experiences because we tend to read different LW content? I skip most of the AI content, so I don’t have a great sense of the quality of comments there. If most AI discussions get a healthy amount of comments, but those comments are mostly noise, then I can certainly understand your perspective.
In my experience actively getting terrible comments can be more frustrating than a lack-of-comments is demotivating.
Agreed. I think this also trends exponentially with the number of terrible comments. It is possible to be overwhelmed to death and have to completely relocate/start over (without proper prevention).
One thing that I think in the long term might be worth considering is something like the SomethingAwful approach: a one-time payment per account that is high enough to discourage trolls but low enough for most anyone to afford in combination with a strong culture and moderation (something LessWrong already has/is working on).