Any sane person could write up a list of antimemes, but no sane person would post it.
It would tend to have the effect of making most people give up on the idea of antimeme, concluding that it’s something that only insane people think about.
It would tend to have the effect of making most people give up on the idea of antimeme
Yes, that effect on most people is kinda in the nature of antimemes.
In a LW context I wouldn’t paint the picture too black though. The average poster’s epistemic standards are high. High enough to warrant a mindful reader’s second look at the antimemes they’re proposing.
The corresponding discussions would certainly not be frictionless. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t provide some high-value insight to a few people, though.
To me this looks like the stuff LW is all about. I mean, aren’t we looking at low-hanging fruit hidden from vantage points of naive epistemology?
I think you’re right. I write about this topic precisely because it could “provide some high-value insight to a few people”. I trust we can figure out a special set of rules for discussing antimemes to make it work. The tiny amount of progress in this field so far suggests there could be lots of low-hanging fruit.
Any sane person could write up a list of antimemes, but no sane person would post it.
I really like this sentence. Writing about this antimemetic subjects is difficult because readers will often fixate on a particular example instead of refuting the central thesis. I’m growing to appreciate why Paul Graham wrote How to Disagree. He must get this kind of criticism all the time.
Any sane person could write up a list of antimemes, but no sane person would post it.
It would tend to have the effect of making most people give up on the idea of antimeme, concluding that it’s something that only insane people think about.
Yes, that effect on most people is kinda in the nature of antimemes.
In a LW context I wouldn’t paint the picture too black though. The average poster’s epistemic standards are high. High enough to warrant a mindful reader’s second look at the antimemes they’re proposing.
The corresponding discussions would certainly not be frictionless. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t provide some high-value insight to a few people, though.
To me this looks like the stuff LW is all about. I mean, aren’t we looking at low-hanging fruit hidden from vantage points of naive epistemology?
I think you’re right. I write about this topic precisely because it could “provide some high-value insight to a few people”. I trust we can figure out a special set of rules for discussing antimemes to make it work. The tiny amount of progress in this field so far suggests there could be lots of low-hanging fruit.
I really like this sentence. Writing about this antimemetic subjects is difficult because readers will often fixate on a particular example instead of refuting the central thesis. I’m growing to appreciate why Paul Graham wrote How to Disagree. He must get this kind of criticism all the time.