I posted this as a question because, although I have my own thoughts on this, I’m not very confident in them because I’m too deep inside LW to be able to see this well, so I want to find out what others think about this. That said, it’d be dishonest if I didn’t at least give what I think is the answer, since if nothing else it motivated me to ask the question!
Here’s the evidence that jumps to mind when I think about this:
certain authors seem to get disproportionately high post scores relative to what I perceive to be the value of what they’re saying
those authors tend to be authors who I perceive to have high status on LW, often drawn from several sources, such as in person connections, other work they are doing, and previous posts they have published
yes, i’m somewhat among this set of people, although it’s (thankfully?) often offset by my being so weird that a few people downvote me
contra: maybe these people always have something valuable to the LW community to say
those authors sometimes write posts they say they think are low quality within the post, yet they still receive higher post scores than average
contra: maybe they misassess the quality of their posts
contra: maybe they say that for other reasons, like to feel like they’ve protected themselves from potential rejection if the post is poorly received
new authors sometimes write very insightful things that are largely ignored (receive very few votes and have lost post scores)
most often i notice this when they fail to conform in some way to LW style expectations
contra: maybe writing style is a secretly cherished LW value that isn’t held up as explicitly as others like insightfulness and accuracy
contra: new people join all the time and some of them gain high status
None of this is perfectly explained by LW being a “classic style intellectual world”, but it seems quite suggestive to me that it has tended in that direction, arguably right from the beginning. Maybe the answer will offer other explanations of this evidence that fit it better, or offer other evidence to suggest I have a skewed view of what LW is like (that’s why I say I’m too deep inside LW to see it clearly).
I posted this as a question because, although I have my own thoughts on this, I’m not very confident in them because I’m too deep inside LW to be able to see this well, so I want to find out what others think about this. That said, it’d be dishonest if I didn’t at least give what I think is the answer, since if nothing else it motivated me to ask the question!
Here’s the evidence that jumps to mind when I think about this:
certain authors seem to get disproportionately high post scores relative to what I perceive to be the value of what they’re saying
those authors tend to be authors who I perceive to have high status on LW, often drawn from several sources, such as in person connections, other work they are doing, and previous posts they have published
yes, i’m somewhat among this set of people, although it’s (thankfully?) often offset by my being so weird that a few people downvote me
contra: maybe these people always have something valuable to the LW community to say
those authors sometimes write posts they say they think are low quality within the post, yet they still receive higher post scores than average
contra: maybe they misassess the quality of their posts
contra: maybe they say that for other reasons, like to feel like they’ve protected themselves from potential rejection if the post is poorly received
new authors sometimes write very insightful things that are largely ignored (receive very few votes and have lost post scores)
most often i notice this when they fail to conform in some way to LW style expectations
contra: maybe writing style is a secretly cherished LW value that isn’t held up as explicitly as others like insightfulness and accuracy
contra: new people join all the time and some of them gain high status
None of this is perfectly explained by LW being a “classic style intellectual world”, but it seems quite suggestive to me that it has tended in that direction, arguably right from the beginning. Maybe the answer will offer other explanations of this evidence that fit it better, or offer other evidence to suggest I have a skewed view of what LW is like (that’s why I say I’m too deep inside LW to see it clearly).