If I correctly understand the argument in “But how does shitposting lead to the pursuit of truth”, I see three somewhat independent lines of reasoning:
There are several important topics today that are nearly impossible to discuss directly for both individual and social reasons. The best way to approach them is with “shitposting” that expresses a real opinion but doesn’t immediately bind the writer to a legible object-level position that could be attacked.
I’m not sure I agree that this is preventing the pursuit of truth, because topics like feminism and QAnon and collective insanity aren’t impossible to discuss with other people who are interested in pursuing truth. They are only impossible to discuss with people playing status games. But it didn’t benefit your understanding very much to discuss them with those people anyway.
I could write this essay on my blog, and 750 people would read it. But 75,000 chuckled at my tweet and hopefully more than 1% of them went hmmm afterward and asked themselves why this is funny and what it means.
I think one crux is—is it really true that if 75k people read that tweet, 1% of them go “hmmm” and ask themselves why it’s funny and what it means? I think that’s incredibly overoptimistic. I would expect a handful at best to end up anywhere near the reasoning that you typed out. You ought to know better than me, since you use Twitter, and I don’t, but 1% seems unbelievable. I barely seriously reflect on 1% of LW comments I read.
This is related to the point above. I get why “shitposting” (is “shitposting” different than “comedy”?) might get more people to read what you wrote, since you made it shorter and funnier. But I don’t get why it would make people have a more open mind about their preconceptions, or think harder, or think in a useful different direction. Maybe it can “raise the sanity waterline” a tiny bit by putting a very simplistic good idea in a lot of people’s heads, although I am skeptical that your example tweet would accomplish that.
I think Twitter is a great compliment to LessWrong for anyone pursuing the art of rationality. It trains you to play with ideas, to improv, read between the lines, make the shadow visible. It allows you to make friends with people who know deep and important things and will never communicate those things to you in a LessWrong-legible way. It teaches you to express yourself outside the constraints of epistemic statuses and acceptable topics of discussion. It teaches you to filter truth from bullshit in the real memetic jungle, real-life rationality under fire.
Those sound like good fun things to do which are not really about the art of rationality, except insofar as going out and doing anything at all can teach you something. They sound like basically the same things that would happen if you hung out talking to people at a random bar, or on a random Discord server, or at work.
>if you hung out talking to people at a random bar, or on a random Discord server, or at work
The difference is that the Twitter ingroup has much more variety and quality (as evidenced by the big LW contingent) than your local bar, since it selects from a huge pool of people in large part for the ability to come up with cool ideas and takes. It’s also much more conducive to open conversation on any and every topic whatsoever in a way that your workplace clearly isn’t (nor should be, you have work to do!)
Of course, your local bar or server or workplace may just happen to be a unique scene that’s even better, I’m not claiming that the Twitter ingroup is somehow ideal or optimal. But most people’s local bars aren’t like that, while Twitter is easily available for everyone everywhere to try out.
If I correctly understand the argument in “But how does shitposting lead to the pursuit of truth”, I see three somewhat independent lines of reasoning:
I’m not sure I agree that this is preventing the pursuit of truth, because topics like feminism and QAnon and collective insanity aren’t impossible to discuss with other people who are interested in pursuing truth. They are only impossible to discuss with people playing status games. But it didn’t benefit your understanding very much to discuss them with those people anyway.
I think one crux is—is it really true that if 75k people read that tweet, 1% of them go “hmmm” and ask themselves why it’s funny and what it means? I think that’s incredibly overoptimistic. I would expect a handful at best to end up anywhere near the reasoning that you typed out. You ought to know better than me, since you use Twitter, and I don’t, but 1% seems unbelievable. I barely seriously reflect on 1% of LW comments I read.
This is related to the point above. I get why “shitposting” (is “shitposting” different than “comedy”?) might get more people to read what you wrote, since you made it shorter and funnier. But I don’t get why it would make people have a more open mind about their preconceptions, or think harder, or think in a useful different direction. Maybe it can “raise the sanity waterline” a tiny bit by putting a very simplistic good idea in a lot of people’s heads, although I am skeptical that your example tweet would accomplish that.
Those sound like good fun things to do which are not really about the art of rationality, except insofar as going out and doing anything at all can teach you something. They sound like basically the same things that would happen if you hung out talking to people at a random bar, or on a random Discord server, or at work.
>if you hung out talking to people at a random bar, or on a random Discord server, or at work
The difference is that the Twitter ingroup has much more variety and quality (as evidenced by the big LW contingent) than your local bar, since it selects from a huge pool of people in large part for the ability to come up with cool ideas and takes. It’s also much more conducive to open conversation on any and every topic whatsoever in a way that your workplace clearly isn’t (nor should be, you have work to do!)
Of course, your local bar or server or workplace may just happen to be a unique scene that’s even better, I’m not claiming that the Twitter ingroup is somehow ideal or optimal. But most people’s local bars aren’t like that, while Twitter is easily available for everyone everywhere to try out.
No, it just selects for the ability to be viral on demand. Which is anticorrelated with truth.