I was told by a professional developmental psychologist that it’s often the psychology assistants who have the creative ideas—the psychology training can get in the way. This may be due to problems like anchoring bias (where they’re anchoring to all that existing information from their education), bias blind spots (I’ve seen these caused by the ego that one can get due to having a high-level degree), and confirmation bias (which can only happen if you have preconceptions to confirm) or others.
Specifically because many LessWrong members are not as educated as the people you’d find writing a scientific journal, LessWrong could have some real gems. It occurs to me to think about Greek salons, fourchan /b and the U.S. virtue of freedom. Ancient Greek salons, from what I understand, were not structured like modern schools—basically the smart people got together and talked. But what do we know the ancient Greeks for? Having lots of ideas. Fourchan /b is lawless. What do we know them for? Creating a lot of internet memes. And why is freedom a virtue in the United States? Because among other things, freedom is credited with unleashing innovation.
LessWrong is much more free than a peer-reviewed journal because it does not enforce any educational requirement, it allows perspectives as diverse as Yvain’s to Will Newsome’s (sort of), and our ideas are much freer because we don’t all have that big “curse of knowledge” to contend with.
If we do this, could we discover that LessWrong is an innovation powerhouse?
Incredibly good idea! Why:
I was told by a professional developmental psychologist that it’s often the psychology assistants who have the creative ideas—the psychology training can get in the way. This may be due to problems like anchoring bias (where they’re anchoring to all that existing information from their education), bias blind spots (I’ve seen these caused by the ego that one can get due to having a high-level degree), and confirmation bias (which can only happen if you have preconceptions to confirm) or others.
Specifically because many LessWrong members are not as educated as the people you’d find writing a scientific journal, LessWrong could have some real gems. It occurs to me to think about Greek salons, fourchan /b and the U.S. virtue of freedom. Ancient Greek salons, from what I understand, were not structured like modern schools—basically the smart people got together and talked. But what do we know the ancient Greeks for? Having lots of ideas. Fourchan /b is lawless. What do we know them for? Creating a lot of internet memes. And why is freedom a virtue in the United States? Because among other things, freedom is credited with unleashing innovation.
LessWrong is much more free than a peer-reviewed journal because it does not enforce any educational requirement, it allows perspectives as diverse as Yvain’s to Will Newsome’s (sort of), and our ideas are much freer because we don’t all have that big “curse of knowledge” to contend with.
If we do this, could we discover that LessWrong is an innovation powerhouse?