I do think there are a lot more bad takes on LW than before
Seriously, people, go back to a randomly selected comment section from 10 years ago. Go back to a random discussion post from 10 years ago. These were not, in the median, better posts or comments! Indeed, they were very consistently much much worse.
I don’t think it’s even the case that more bad takes are written now that we have more content. The ratio to the most active time of LW 1.0 is only like 2x or 3x, and indeed those most active times were the ones where you had a ton of really dumb political discussions, and pickup artistry discussions and everything was inundated with people who just showed up because of HPMoR, which to be clear included me, but I was still a dumb commenter with dumb takes.
Seriously, people, go back to a randomly selected comment section from 10 years ago. Go back to a random discussion post from 10 years ago. These were not, in the median, better posts or comments! Indeed, they were very consistently much much worse.
I don’t think it’s even the case that more bad takes are written now that we have more content. The ratio to the most active time of LW 1.0 is only like 2x or 3x, and indeed those most active times were the ones where you had a ton of really dumb political discussions, and pickup artistry discussions and everything was inundated with people who just showed up because of HPMoR, which to be clear included me, but I was still a dumb commenter with dumb takes.