Why? You’re sacrificing a lot of respect. Like, until I saw this, my attitude was “Gears to Ascension is a good commenter, worthy of paying attention to, while “Lauren (often wrong)” is a blowhard I’ve never heard of, who makes assertions without bothering to defend them.” That’s based on the handful of posts I’ve seen since the name change, so you would presumably regain my respect in time.
I think I wouldn’t have seen this if I hadn’t subscribed to your shortform (I subscribe to only a handful of shortforms, so it’s a sign that I want to hear what you have to say).
The gears to ascension is a “blowhard” as you put it, that people have heard of who makes assertions without defending them, and then who gets criticized for having a name that confidently asserts correctness on top of that. I have been frustrated by the mix of overly positive and overly negative reaction my comments get because my name sounds cooler than I think is warranted. Carrying the name “often wrong” feels more in the spirit of this site, anyhow. If I can’t be respected under this name, so be it, and that’s sort of the idea—I don’t want my name to carry respect. I want individual comments evaluated for their validity. I have bugged the mods to request setting names to hidden by default for everyone, but they wouldn’t have it. My every comment should stand on its own, and the fact that they do not was being ignored too easily because my name was memorable. People with actual impressive education would look down on my name while people without it would look up to it because it sounds all fancy and transhumanist in ways that don’t match my accomplishments. I’d rather my name create a calibrated bad first impression and my comment have to work it off.
edit: getting a lot of disagree votes. I could change it back if folks think I should. if you have a strong opinion, please comment with your take on which name is kinder to the reader in terms of things like avoiding implication of being correct and also retaining identity, I am surprised by the intensity of the response—I expected it to be generally positive due to reduced implied name arrogance, and thereby less clout-seeking aesthetic.
edit #2: changed it back, the arguments about loss of continuity being damage to a public good were convincing to me. I’m still gonna call myself Often Wrong on other sites.
I don’t have particularly strong opinions and think you should do whatever you like with your name, but just as a datapoint I (1) didn’t think “the gears to ascension” was either so cool a name as to demand respect or so stupid a name as to preclude it, and (2) don’t think the “often wrong” in your name will make much difference to how I read your comments.
I don’t think it ever occurred to me to think that calling yourself “the gears to ascension” amounted to claiming to be a key part of some transhumanist project or anything like that. The impression it gave me was “transhumanist picking a name that sounds cool to them”.
The “often wrong” provokes the following thoughts: (1) this person is aware of often being wrong, which is more than most people are, so maybe take them more seriously? (2) this person is, by their own account, often wrong, so maybe take them less seriously? (3) this person is maybe doing a sort of defensive self-deprecatory fishing-for-compliments thing, so maybe take them less seriously? but all of these are pretty weak effects, and I think 2+3 more or less exactly cancel out 1.
“Lauren (often wrong)” is probably about equally memorable to “the gears to ascension”. if your goal is to have all your comments stand on their own, then aside from the one-off effect of reducing the association between things said by “Lauren” and things said by “gears” I don’t think the change will do much one way or the other. “Lauren” on its own is probably less memorable and your comments might be treated as more independent of one another if you just called yourself that. (But there appear already to be two users called just Lauren, so something slightly more specific might be better.)
You are right that “Gears of Ascension” was memorable. I saw many of your comments and had a “yeah, their comments are good” vibe in my head. While I suspect there are people from whom I have seen a similar number of comments without recalling their names enough to even realise its a familiar face the next time I see them.
Commenting on hard mode, eh? I chose my name because a guy who ran his own forum gave himself that title, and I found it hilarious and awesome; but also I was conscious that it marked me as possibly-arrogant, which meant I had to back it up with substance, and I was fine with that.
I don’t want my name to carry respect. I want individual comments evaluated for their validity.
I like this part of your comment a lot! If you don’t want to periodically create new accounts, another possibility is regularly changing your name to something random.
Note: I don’t have the energy or prioritize this enough to make this message more succinct. But I feel like I have communicated the core things I wanted to.
The gears to ascension is a “blowhard” as you put it, that people have heard of who makes assertions without defending them, and then who gets criticized for having a name that confidently asserts correctness on top of that.
I think it is okay to make assertions without defending them—there’s a cost to defending your assertions and your messages can be written with certain audiences and goals in mind that might make defending your assertions not relevant or not worth the effort.
Are you sure that your username causes people to criticize you for confidently asserting correctness? At least from personal experience, I’ve noticed that most people who choose their usernames and profile pictures on the internet do so as a way to communicate certain aesthetics—non-content based information about themselves. It is about identity and fun. I think most people learn to separate the username aesthetics from the epistemic prior of a person. I know I have.
“The gears of ascension” is an interesting name. It is memorable. Paired with a rather abrasive commenting strategy in end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, your comments annoyed me enough that I put your LW account on ignore (until about March 2023, when I saw your writings / messages on certain Discord servers). This, however, did not involve me ever thinking that your username implied / promised something specific about your content. I like your username, because it communicates something about your desires and how you see yourself and your aesthetics.
Carrying the name “often wrong” feels more in the spirit of this site, anyhow.
When I imagine myself doing this, the use of “often wrong” in one’s username feels… defensive. It feels like I’m trying to pre-emptively lower people’s epistemic priors for me so that I don’t get punished for being wrong. This does make sense certain zero sum environments, one where I don’t want to be singled out or noticed for making mistakes, because that leads to being blamed and being isolated and kicked out. This however seems counterproductive from a positive sum epistemic system standpoint, one where you want people to engage in accurate credit assignment to other people’s claims. If one develops a reputation for ‘being wrong’, then that is useful for the system’s function since their claims are given less weight. As long as this is paired with, say, a UBI-equivalent quality of life okayness for the wrong entity in this system, it doesn’t seem bad. After all, the global epistemics of the system sure is better.
You think Eliezer would say he’s often wrong? Carrying the name “often wrong” is not in the spirit of this site. The belief that one is often wrong is supposed to be individual, you knowing this and stating this to yourself. It isn’t intended to be a blanket statement you tell other people that you prefix your claims with.
If I can’t be respected under this name, so be it, and that’s sort of the idea—I don’t want my name to carry respect. I want individual comments evaluated for their validity.
So changing your name, in some ways, is destruction of common knowledge, because people have built up a rich mental model of your beliefs, your epistemics, and the domains where you are mentally robust or mentally fragile.
People with actual impressive education would look down on my name while people without it would look up to it because it sounds all fancy and transhumanist in ways that don’t match my accomplishments.
I’d argue your current username might also cause “people with actual impressive education” (who don’t decouple username vibes from content epistemic prior) to be less open to reading your comments. There’s no point in caring about the opinions of people who seem to get impressed by your username either, I don’t think their efforts are relevant to your goals.
My every comment should stand on its own, and the fact that they do not was being ignored too easily because my name was memorable.
No, throwing away information is sub-optimal for group epistemics. Your name gives me context. When you comment on, say, a post by Tsvi, and state that you feel optimistic about his models, it gives me an idea of where your mind is at, what research skills you value and are learning, what your alignment models are (or are shifting towards, given what I know of your alignment model). This helps me figure out how to make good things happen that might involve recommending stuff to you that you might be interested in, for example.
The fact that your name is memorable is useful for this.
I don’t think I’ve very well described my intuitions about accurate credit assignment and reputation and group epistemics, but I’m trying to point in that direction, and I hope I’ve at least succeeded, even if I haven’t given you a clear and coherent model of this.
Why? You’re sacrificing a lot of respect. Like, until I saw this, my attitude was “Gears to Ascension is a good commenter, worthy of paying attention to, while “Lauren (often wrong)” is a blowhard I’ve never heard of, who makes assertions without bothering to defend them.” That’s based on the handful of posts I’ve seen since the name change, so you would presumably regain my respect in time.
I think I wouldn’t have seen this if I hadn’t subscribed to your shortform (I subscribe to only a handful of shortforms, so it’s a sign that I want to hear what you have to say).
The gears to ascension is a “blowhard” as you put it, that people have heard of who makes assertions without defending them, and then who gets criticized for having a name that confidently asserts correctness on top of that. I have been frustrated by the mix of overly positive and overly negative reaction my comments get because my name sounds cooler than I think is warranted. Carrying the name “often wrong” feels more in the spirit of this site, anyhow. If I can’t be respected under this name, so be it, and that’s sort of the idea—I don’t want my name to carry respect. I want individual comments evaluated for their validity. I have bugged the mods to request setting names to hidden by default for everyone, but they wouldn’t have it. My every comment should stand on its own, and the fact that they do not was being ignored too easily because my name was memorable. People with actual impressive education would look down on my name while people without it would look up to it because it sounds all fancy and transhumanist in ways that don’t match my accomplishments. I’d rather my name create a calibrated bad first impression and my comment have to work it off.
edit: getting a lot of disagree votes. I could change it back if folks think I should. if you have a strong opinion, please comment with your take on which name is kinder to the reader in terms of things like avoiding implication of being correct and also retaining identity, I am surprised by the intensity of the response—I expected it to be generally positive due to reduced implied name arrogance, and thereby less clout-seeking aesthetic.
edit #2: changed it back, the arguments about loss of continuity being damage to a public good were convincing to me. I’m still gonna call myself Often Wrong on other sites.
I don’t have particularly strong opinions and think you should do whatever you like with your name, but just as a datapoint I (1) didn’t think “the gears to ascension” was either so cool a name as to demand respect or so stupid a name as to preclude it, and (2) don’t think the “often wrong” in your name will make much difference to how I read your comments.
I don’t think it ever occurred to me to think that calling yourself “the gears to ascension” amounted to claiming to be a key part of some transhumanist project or anything like that. The impression it gave me was “transhumanist picking a name that sounds cool to them”.
The “often wrong” provokes the following thoughts: (1) this person is aware of often being wrong, which is more than most people are, so maybe take them more seriously? (2) this person is, by their own account, often wrong, so maybe take them less seriously? (3) this person is maybe doing a sort of defensive self-deprecatory fishing-for-compliments thing, so maybe take them less seriously? but all of these are pretty weak effects, and I think 2+3 more or less exactly cancel out 1.
“Lauren (often wrong)” is probably about equally memorable to “the gears to ascension”. if your goal is to have all your comments stand on their own, then aside from the one-off effect of reducing the association between things said by “Lauren” and things said by “gears” I don’t think the change will do much one way or the other. “Lauren” on its own is probably less memorable and your comments might be treated as more independent of one another if you just called yourself that. (But there appear already to be two users called just Lauren, so something slightly more specific might be better.)
You are right that “Gears of Ascension” was memorable. I saw many of your comments and had a “yeah, their comments are good” vibe in my head. While I suspect there are people from whom I have seen a similar number of comments without recalling their names enough to even realise its a familiar face the next time I see them.
Commenting on hard mode, eh? I chose my name because a guy who ran his own forum gave himself that title, and I found it hilarious and awesome; but also I was conscious that it marked me as possibly-arrogant, which meant I had to back it up with substance, and I was fine with that.
I kinda suspect that it won’t make it that much harder. Anyway, I personally think “often wrong” is an extremely cool thing to be called.
I like this part of your comment a lot! If you don’t want to periodically create new accounts, another possibility is regularly changing your name to something random.
Note: I don’t have the energy or prioritize this enough to make this message more succinct. But I feel like I have communicated the core things I wanted to.
I think it is okay to make assertions without defending them—there’s a cost to defending your assertions and your messages can be written with certain audiences and goals in mind that might make defending your assertions not relevant or not worth the effort.
Are you sure that your username causes people to criticize you for confidently asserting correctness? At least from personal experience, I’ve noticed that most people who choose their usernames and profile pictures on the internet do so as a way to communicate certain aesthetics—non-content based information about themselves. It is about identity and fun. I think most people learn to separate the username aesthetics from the epistemic prior of a person. I know I have.
“The gears of ascension” is an interesting name. It is memorable. Paired with a rather abrasive commenting strategy in end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, your comments annoyed me enough that I put your LW account on ignore (until about March 2023, when I saw your writings / messages on certain Discord servers). This, however, did not involve me ever thinking that your username implied / promised something specific about your content. I like your username, because it communicates something about your desires and how you see yourself and your aesthetics.
When I imagine myself doing this, the use of “often wrong” in one’s username feels… defensive. It feels like I’m trying to pre-emptively lower people’s epistemic priors for me so that I don’t get punished for being wrong. This does make sense certain zero sum environments, one where I don’t want to be singled out or noticed for making mistakes, because that leads to being blamed and being isolated and kicked out. This however seems counterproductive from a positive sum epistemic system standpoint, one where you want people to engage in accurate credit assignment to other people’s claims. If one develops a reputation for ‘being wrong’, then that is useful for the system’s function since their claims are given less weight. As long as this is paired with, say, a UBI-equivalent quality of life okayness for the wrong entity in this system, it doesn’t seem bad. After all, the global epistemics of the system sure is better.
You think Eliezer would say he’s often wrong? Carrying the name “often wrong” is not in the spirit of this site. The belief that one is often wrong is supposed to be individual, you knowing this and stating this to yourself. It isn’t intended to be a blanket statement you tell other people that you prefix your claims with.
So changing your name, in some ways, is destruction of common knowledge, because people have built up a rich mental model of your beliefs, your epistemics, and the domains where you are mentally robust or mentally fragile.
I’d argue your current username might also cause “people with actual impressive education” (who don’t decouple username vibes from content epistemic prior) to be less open to reading your comments. There’s no point in caring about the opinions of people who seem to get impressed by your username either, I don’t think their efforts are relevant to your goals.
No, throwing away information is sub-optimal for group epistemics. Your name gives me context. When you comment on, say, a post by Tsvi, and state that you feel optimistic about his models, it gives me an idea of where your mind is at, what research skills you value and are learning, what your alignment models are (or are shifting towards, given what I know of your alignment model). This helps me figure out how to make good things happen that might involve recommending stuff to you that you might be interested in, for example.
The fact that your name is memorable is useful for this.
I don’t think I’ve very well described my intuitions about accurate credit assignment and reputation and group epistemics, but I’m trying to point in that direction, and I hope I’ve at least succeeded, even if I haven’t given you a clear and coherent model of this.