(I downvoted this because it seems like the kind of thing that will spark lots of unproductive discussion. Like in some senses LessWrong is of course a neutral common space. In many ways it isn’t.
I feel like people will just take this statement as some kind of tribal flag. I think there are many good critiques about both what LW should aspire to in terms of neutrality, and what it currently is, but this doesn’t feel like the start of a good conversation about that. If people do want to discuss it I would be very happy to talk about it though.)
This is not straightforward to me: I can’t see how Lesswrong is any less of a neutral or common space as a taxpayer funded, beauracratically governed library, or an algorithmically served news feed on an advertiser-supported platform like Facebook, or “community center” event spaces that are biased towards a community, common only to that community. I’m not sure what your idea of neutrality is, commonality.
Different people will understand it differently! LW is of course aspiring to a bunch of really crucial dimensions of neutrality and discussions of neutrality make up like a solid 2-digit percentage of LessWrong team internal team discussions. We might fail at them, but we definitely aspire to them.
Some ways I really care about neutrality and think LessWrong is neutral:
If the LW team disagrees with someone we don’t ban them or try to censor them, if they follow good norms of discourse
If the LW team team thinks a conclusion is really good for people to arrive at, we don’t promote it beyond the weight for the arguments for that conclusion
We keep voting anonymous to allow people to express opinions about site content without fear of retribution
We try really hard culturally to avoid party lines on object-level issues, and try to keep the site culture focused on shared principles of discussion and inquiry
I could go into the details, but this is indeed the conversation that I felt like wouldn’t go well in this context.
I agree that the banner is in conflict with some aspects of neutrality! Some of which I am sad about, some of which I endorse, some of which I regret (and might still change today or tomorrow).
Of course LessWrong is not just “a website” to me. You can read my now almost full decade of writing and arguing with people about the principles behind LessWrong, and the extremely long history of things like the frontpage/personal distinction which has made many many people who would like to do things like promote their job ads or events or fellowships on our frontpage angry at me.
The website may or may not be neutral, but it’s obvious that the project is not neutral.
Look, the whole reason why this conversation seemed like it would go badly is because you keep using big words without defining them and then asserting absolutes with them. I don’t know what you mean by “the project is not neutral”, and I think the same is true for almost all other readers.
Do you mean that the project is used for local political ends? Do you mean that the project has epistemic standards? Do you mean that the project is corrupt? Do you mean that the project is too responsive to external political forces? Do you mean that the project is arbitrary and unfair in ways that isn’t necessarily the cause of what any individual wants, but still has too much noise to be called “neutral”? I don’t know, all of these are reasonable things someon might mean by “neutrality” in one context, and I don’t really want to have a conversation where people just throw around big words like this without at least some awareness of the ambiguity.
Lesswrong is not neutral because it is built on the principle of where a walled garden ought to be defended from pests and uncharitable principles. Where politics can kill minds. Out of all possible distribution of human interactions we could have on the internet, we pick this narrow band because that’s what makes high quality interaction. It makes us well calibrated (relative to baseline). It makes us more willing to ignore status plays and disagree with our idols.
All these things I love are not neutrality. They are deliberate policies for a less wrong discourse. Lesswrong is all the better because it is not neutral. And just because neutrality is a high-status word where a impartial judge may seem to be—doesn’t mean we should lay claim to it.
FWIW I do aspire to things discussed in Sarah Constantin’s Neutrality essay. For instance, I want it to be true that regardless of whether your position is popular or unpopular, your arguments will be evaluated on their merits on LessWrong. (This can never be perfectly true but I do think it is the case that in comments people primarily respond to arguments with counterarguments rather than with comments about popularity or status and so on, which is not the case in almost any other part of the public internet.)
Fair. In Sarah Constantin’s terminology, it seems you aspire to “potentially take a stand on the controversy, but only when a conclusion emerges from an impartial process that a priori could have come out either way”. I… really don’t know if I’d call that neutrality in the sense of the normal daily usage of neutrality. But I think it is a worthy and good goal.
lesswrong is not a neutral common space.
(I downvoted this because it seems like the kind of thing that will spark lots of unproductive discussion. Like in some senses LessWrong is of course a neutral common space. In many ways it isn’t.
I feel like people will just take this statement as some kind of tribal flag. I think there are many good critiques about both what LW should aspire to in terms of neutrality, and what it currently is, but this doesn’t feel like the start of a good conversation about that. If people do want to discuss it I would be very happy to talk about it though.)
Here are some examples of neutral common spaces:
Libraries
Facebook (usually)
Community center event spaces
Here are some examples of spaces which are not neutral or common:
The alignment forum
The NYT (or essentially any newspaper’s) opinions column
The EA forum
Lesswrong
This seems straightforwardly true to me. I’m not sure what tribe it’s supposed to be a flag for.
This is not straightforward to me:
I can’t see how Lesswrong is any less of a neutral or common space as a taxpayer funded, beauracratically governed library, or an algorithmically served news feed on an advertiser-supported platform like Facebook, or “community center” event spaces that are biased towards a community, common only to that community. I’m not sure what your idea of neutrality is, commonality.
Different people will understand it differently! LW is of course aspiring to a bunch of really crucial dimensions of neutrality and discussions of neutrality make up like a solid 2-digit percentage of LessWrong team internal team discussions. We might fail at them, but we definitely aspire to them.
Some ways I really care about neutrality and think LessWrong is neutral:
If the LW team disagrees with someone we don’t ban them or try to censor them, if they follow good norms of discourse
If the LW team team thinks a conclusion is really good for people to arrive at, we don’t promote it beyond the weight for the arguments for that conclusion
We keep voting anonymous to allow people to express opinions about site content without fear of retribution
We try really hard culturally to avoid party lines on object-level issues, and try to keep the site culture focused on shared principles of discussion and inquiry
I could go into the details, but this is indeed the conversation that I felt like wouldn’t go well in this context.
Okay, this does raise the question of why the “if anyone builds it, everyone dies” frontage?
I think that the difference in how we view this is because to me, lesswrong is a community / intellectual project. To you it’s a website.
The website may or may not be neutral, but it’s obvious that the project is not neutral.
I agree that the banner is in conflict with some aspects of neutrality! Some of which I am sad about, some of which I endorse, some of which I regret (and might still change today or tomorrow).
Of course LessWrong is not just “a website” to me. You can read my now almost full decade of writing and arguing with people about the principles behind LessWrong, and the extremely long history of things like the frontpage/personal distinction which has made many many people who would like to do things like promote their job ads or events or fellowships on our frontpage angry at me.
Look, the whole reason why this conversation seemed like it would go badly is because you keep using big words without defining them and then asserting absolutes with them. I don’t know what you mean by “the project is not neutral”, and I think the same is true for almost all other readers.
Do you mean that the project is used for local political ends? Do you mean that the project has epistemic standards? Do you mean that the project is corrupt? Do you mean that the project is too responsive to external political forces? Do you mean that the project is arbitrary and unfair in ways that isn’t necessarily the cause of what any individual wants, but still has too much noise to be called “neutral”? I don’t know, all of these are reasonable things someon might mean by “neutrality” in one context, and I don’t really want to have a conversation where people just throw around big words like this without at least some awareness of the ambiguity.
I don’t think Cole is wrong.
Lesswrong is not neutral because it is built on the principle of where a walled garden ought to be defended from pests and uncharitable principles. Where politics can kill minds. Out of all possible distribution of human interactions we could have on the internet, we pick this narrow band because that’s what makes high quality interaction. It makes us well calibrated (relative to baseline). It makes us more willing to ignore status plays and disagree with our idols.
All these things I love are not neutrality. They are deliberate policies for a less wrong discourse. Lesswrong is all the better because it is not neutral. And just because neutrality is a high-status word where a impartial judge may seem to be—doesn’t mean we should lay claim to it.
FWIW I do aspire to things discussed in Sarah Constantin’s Neutrality essay. For instance, I want it to be true that regardless of whether your position is popular or unpopular, your arguments will be evaluated on their merits on LessWrong. (This can never be perfectly true but I do think it is the case that in comments people primarily respond to arguments with counterarguments rather than with comments about popularity or status and so on, which is not the case in almost any other part of the public internet.)
Fair. In Sarah Constantin’s terminology, it seems you aspire to “potentially take a stand on the controversy, but only when a conclusion emerges from an impartial process that a priori could have come out either way”. I… really don’t know if I’d call that neutrality in the sense of the normal daily usage of neutrality. But I think it is a worthy and good goal.