0 comments
Comments sorted by top scores.
comment by Qiaochu_Yuan · 2013-01-30T05:51:12.868Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
My current strategy is to become more awesome to close the awesomeness gap.
Replies from: Vaniver, jooyous↑ comment by jooyous · 2013-01-30T06:01:32.806Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm not convinced that works on all axes. =]
For example, I probably have to accept the fact that I will never be an awesome contortionist. =/ Trying would just be setting me up for disappointment. Also, pain.
Replies from: Qiaochu_Yuan↑ comment by Qiaochu_Yuan · 2013-01-30T18:46:42.353Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
But you can still be an awesome [some other thing]. I think it's easier not to fall into the worst failure modes when dealing with awesome people if you're an awesome person, even if the thing you're awesome at is not the thing they're awesome at. There's also an adjustment in attitude related to closing the awesomeness gap, which is to view awesome people as Bayesian evidence about how awesome it's possible for humans to be instead of as threats to your awesomeness.
Replies from: jooyous↑ comment by jooyous · 2013-01-30T19:33:56.566Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I think you're talking about a slightly different failure mode than what I have in mind.
Story: I've never had any musical training, but when I was in middle school I had two friends that were musicians, and one was all about the classical music and she was in band, etc, while the other dude is a death metal drummer. And every time I had any opinion on any piece of music at all, they would just tear into it and tell me that it was all crap and that I was wrong. And because they were both musicians, and I wasn't devoted to any of these things I liked, I sorta had to admit that they probably had more expertise about this music stuff than I did and therefore probably knew what they were talking about.
But, oddly enough, this didn't stop me from ... liking some music? Who knew, right? But the result is that to this day I am literally afraid to tell anyone about my music preferences because I feel like I'm not allowed to have any because I'm not an actual musician. Yet when I query my own brain about why I like something, there's some things that, for example, have brilliant, awesome lyrics (which I have more "expertise" in) and some that my brain just says "eh? iono!" and still likes the thing.
So one solution is to go out and take a ton of musical classes and find out exactly what's going on and develop snobbish music tastes so that I can hold my own with these people. But if I have other stuff to do, another option is to accept that there's just going to be some stuff that I like for the "eh iono" reason and that's okay. And I don't have to defend it from anyone! So even if I'm trying to maximize awesome along some axes, I can still participate and experience awesome along others. =]
*dances*
↑ comment by Qiaochu_Yuan · 2013-01-30T19:45:21.722Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This doesn't seem very related to the content of the OP. You don't mention having a fangirl reaction to either of your friends (who, by the way, sound like bad friends). It sounds like you just didn't distinguish between the folowing phenomena:
- A domain expert has a lot of knowledge about her domain, and is therefore better at making anticipation-controlling statements about it than non-domain experts.
- A domain expert has preferences about parts of her domain that disagree with the preferences of non-domain experts for various reasons.
That is, I think it's reasonable to hypothesize that musicians have very different preferences about music than non-musicians for various reasons, e.g. because musical training modifies how a musician experiences music or because of tribalism and identity issues. For example, when a classical musician tells you that rap music is a piece of crap, I don't think they're making an anticipation-controlling statement; they're cheering for the classical music team. They may also be making a statement about their own preferences, which are probably informed by their training and don't need to impinge on your preferences.
Replies from: jooyous↑ comment by jooyous · 2013-01-30T19:56:14.984Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Exactly! There was tribalism/identity mixed up in their expertise for both of them! But I was only doing step 1 from the list but none of the others. So I had no tribe on my side to back me up against the strength of theirs, which put me in this weird, vulnerable position that led me to the flawed conclusion that I wasn't allowed to hang out in the music axis of thingspace at all. But, when you do the other steps, it's just things you put into your ears, and compared to all the other things out there in the world to do, it's nothing to really to fight over or get freaked out by. "You're judging me for things I put into my ears? Really?"
Also, I feel like it's pretty common to have bad friends in middle school. =/
Replies from: Qiaochu_Yuan↑ comment by Qiaochu_Yuan · 2013-01-30T21:14:26.692Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Right, but what does this have to do with worship? It doesn't sound like you felt any temptation to worship your friends.
Replies from: jooyous↑ comment by jooyous · 2013-01-30T21:24:14.646Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Ohh! Yeah, it was a reply to your "closing the awesomeness gap" comment. Dealing with awesome people without having to close the awesomeness gap between us? Especially people that have a mixture of awesomeness AND tribalism issues going on. ^_^
comment by [deleted] · 2013-01-30T14:58:10.198Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
phyg
I regret starting that.
I wrote a post called Our Cult is not Exclusive Enough, because it isn't, and it would be better if more of us were more fully indoctrinated. Somehow I missed the irony in changing my words to make LW more palatable to outsiders in a post about how I wish there were less outsiders around.
I have accepted the truth. Less wrong is a cult. I am a cult organizer. Deal with it.
As for your actual article, the approach seems good. beware of other optimizing your brother. I like your list of things to do.
Replies from: Desrtopa, None, Rain, jooyous↑ comment by Desrtopa · 2013-01-30T21:19:04.718Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There's a difference between holding high standards for newcomers who want to become community members, and discouraging new people from joining the community. If we flip legitimate heuristics for filtering cranks from reasonable thinkers, we're liable to filter out people who would be valuable community members. I don't think we want that.
↑ comment by [deleted] · 2013-01-30T17:33:27.240Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Does this mean we can use the C-word now?
Replies from: ArisKatsaris↑ comment by ArisKatsaris · 2013-02-03T18:15:12.121Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Not using the word "cult" is not a rule in this forum, never has been (and btw nor would I like it to ever so become).
Replies from: None↑ comment by [deleted] · 2013-02-03T22:08:18.934Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
But darn if there hasn't been a lot of social pressure to use the ROT13'd "phyg" sitewide, so that LW is not linked to the term "cult" in web searches. In any case, my question was tongue-in-cheek and kinda snarky. I'm aware there was never any sort of official policy preventing it.
↑ comment by jooyous · 2013-01-30T19:14:15.217Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
That's definitely a good point. I mostly bring up this stuff when he tries to get me to watch his favorite videos, because he gets really offended when I politely refuse to watch videos I don't expect to appreciate.
I think there's nothing wrong with indoctrination materials? It helps to have words that mean the same thing that everyone can use to understand each other!
I am more worried about turning into ... rock band groupies? Like the "omg omg omg omg omg omg omg he looked at me!!" effect. While that's probably normal to some degree, I think that's what eventually turns into the halo effect and legitimate admiration leaks into areas where it doesn't belong.
Replies from: IlyaShpitser↑ comment by IlyaShpitser · 2013-01-31T10:22:54.948Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Less wrong is a cult. I am a cult organizer. Deal with it.
I think there's nothing wrong with indoctrination materials? It helps to have words that mean the same thing that everyone can use to understand each other!
Less Wrong already has a "Google problem" with the phyg word. Would you mind typing "phyg" instead?
Amazing. I keep telling you, your choices are mainstream academia or Objectivism.
comment by [deleted] · 2013-01-30T05:11:41.974Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Two short comments from the flip side: how (relatively) famous people handle attention.
First: I recently went to a lecture where everyone was greeted at the door by a senior regional political figure. A handshake and a hello said 'yes, that's me' and then came a pat on the back. In the moment of the pat I thought 'my, that's being really accessible.' Then I saw the function of the pat was 'okay, you're done now, keep moving.' The idea was full fame but for a limited time.
Second: I am a long-time writer under another name for the Church of the SubGenius. At SubGenius events around the world I am a famous guy... under another name. My day to day life has nearly no fame content. Noting how the fame switch can be turned on and off, I don't get overly worked up when I meet famous people. Just worked up enough.
Replies from: jooyous, CronoDAS↑ comment by jooyous · 2013-01-30T05:33:55.088Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Ohh, this is awesome! What kind of attention do you get? Do you get asked for autographs? Do you ever get attention that feels really irrelevant to the 'reason' you're famous?
Replies from: None↑ comment by [deleted] · 2013-01-30T14:35:42.434Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Kind words and autograph requests and questions are much appreciated and inspire me to write more. The off-kilter attention is when people stare and do not approach. After the devival I get on an airplane, come home and it's off like a bedside lamp. Back to Clark Kent mode.
↑ comment by jooyous · 2013-01-30T09:34:25.528Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
One side effect of this whole thing is now I'm experiencing really strong associations with figs.
Replies from: David_Gerard, Andreas_Giger↑ comment by Andreas_Giger · 2013-01-30T12:00:56.316Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
And I'm wondering whether phyg is an encryption of 'cult' or a new word. Is LW phygish or phyggish?
comment by V_V · 2013-01-31T00:23:43.426Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I think that writing phyg instead of cult is actually cultish.
It's a combination of clique jargon and a attempt to present a distorted image of the community by disonestly manipulating the Google rank. These are the sort of things you'd expect from a cult.
Replies from: fubarobfusco, Viliam_Bur↑ comment by fubarobfusco · 2013-02-03T01:47:40.077Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Don't worry too much. Eventually, search engines will learn "phyg" as a synonym for "cult". The more we talk about it, the faster that will happen.
↑ comment by Viliam_Bur · 2013-02-03T00:30:38.638Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If manipulating Google rank is mark of cultishness, then by fixing the HTML tags on my homepage I have already become a new L Ron Hubbard.
Seriously, most people and organizations care about their images. We live among other people; our social images matter. We can take that as a small evidence for cultism, or as a greater evidence for non-autism.
Replies from: V_V↑ comment by V_V · 2013-02-03T01:53:35.391Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If manipulating Google rank is mark of cultishness
There may be legitimate reasons for manipulating the Google rank, wich pretty much boil down to helping Google to properly index your content, and there are dishonest reason, which involve trying to fool Google about your content.
According to Wikipedia:
An SEO technique is considered white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines[27][28][40] are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see. White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility,[41] although the two are not identical.
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.
It seems pretty clear to me that trying to persuade your users to obfuscate keywords when they post on a public forum is a black hat SEO technique. If LessWrong has lots of internal discussion about its alleged cultishness, then this should be represented by search engines. Trying to use tricks to misrepresent yourself is dishonest.
Deception and misrepresentation are typical traits of cults, not legitimate research institutions.
Replies from: Viliam_Bur↑ comment by Viliam_Bur · 2013-02-03T13:08:17.916Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
A black-hat style solution would be like this: Make a list of "censored words". Whenever one of the words appears on the page, replace it by its rot-13 version, and include a script that will replace it back in the user's browser. So the users will see the original version (unless they have javascript disabled), but Google will see the rot-13 version. (The only problem would be how to handle the article URLs.) This would be deceiving Google about the true content.
A closer analogy to using the word "phyg" would be political correctness. A word is forbidden, and another word is recommended as an official replacement. The former Cultists removed their negative connotations and became proud Phyg-Americans! (Just joking.)
Replies from: V_V↑ comment by V_V · 2013-02-03T16:08:14.869Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
A black-hat style solution would be like this: Make a list of "censored words". Whenever one of the words appears on the page, replace it by its rot-13 version, and include a script that will replace it back in the user's browser. So the users will see the original version (unless they have javascript disabled), but Google will see the rot-13 version. (The only problem would be how to handle the article URLs.) This would be deceiving Google about the true content.
Don't give them ideas.
A closer analogy to using the word "phyg" would be political correctness. A word is forbidden, and another word is recommended as an official replacement.
Phyg is not an euphemism for cult, it's outright obfuscation, and it's deliberately done to fool search engines, as Muehlhauser said in this very thread.
comment by John_Maxwell (John_Maxwell_IV) · 2013-01-30T07:51:04.566Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I think I disagree with EY's conclusion in the essay you linked to. Given scary research findings related to status differences (also potentially relevant if "high-status person's opinion" could act as an effective stand-in for "majority opinion"), I think there are good epistemological reasons to try to treat everyone as an equal by default. (BTW, the relatively large status differences between LW users worry me some. I read LW for years before noticing status-related biases in my thinking and attempting to fix them.)
Acknowledging someone's long list of accomplishments and perceiving them as higher status seem to me like different brain phenomena, in the same way saying "Oh, that's going to make it hard for me to accomplish my goal" and feeling discouraged are different brain phenomena (in other words, emotions and declarative thoughts don't have to be in perfect correspondence). Yes, it's good to reinforce people for doing useful things, but acting like a fanboy/fangirl is not the only way to reinforce someone.
Edit: Reply to EY's essay:
Yes, having people show off how willing they are to disagree with you is problematic for everyone involved. Suggestion: Try to make yourself less imposing so disagreeing or agreeing with you is less of a big deal. (BTW, I think EY is getting better at this, good for him.)
In the library story, all of the problems you describe are problems that arise from status differences. When there's a high-status person around, it becomes difficult to define yourself except in terms of whether you agree or disagree with them. (Insert evolutionary psychology speculation here.) Like many social problems, status differences are the product of the behavior of both parties in the interaction, and therefore the problem can be attacked from both ends.
Overall, reluctance to acquiesce to high-status people among the "our kind" crowd is a good thing, because it pushes against certain status and conformity-related failure modes. (See above links. Yes, if Less Wrong were an army platoon it might be a bad thing, but we're not.) I think it's probably better to try to express this reluctance through casual egalitarianism than deliberate rebellion, though.
↑ comment by jooyous · 2013-01-30T08:30:37.429Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yeah, I definitely agree with your first point. EY writes "and then from talking to this person for 30 seconds I determined that they were not worth listening to" which makes me terrified and therefore much less likely to make sense in those initial 30 seconds if I were confronted with ... him. (That link was one of the more forgiving contexts.)
But I think I was trying to push for a boring, paperwork evaluation of where that status came from. In some cases, you might examine it and decide you should actually trust the person's expertise on some matter. But not all matters everywhere ever and no they can't also sign your arm/face.
comment by private_messaging · 2013-01-31T07:41:56.256Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I think the problem is not so much awesomeness but the cases where awesomeness is over estimated by most attendees, such as when people specifically want to hang out with figures of awesomeness and especially when they want to have some figure of awesomeness that only they are smart enough / rational enough / etc. to see as awesome.
comment by Emile · 2013-01-30T07:53:12.382Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Once you start trying to be aware of identity issues, you can spot which celebrities actively avoid being the center of a community of people who identify with them and which celebrities do things to intentionally suck you in. I don't think that's a good enough reason to conclude they're a phyg leader because there's a pretty big gap between fans who want your autograph and a mindless drone army, but I feel like it's useful to be aware of.
There's some discussion of avoiding the creation of fan behavior here (mostly from the point of view of people like Eliezer who would rather have community members rather than adoring fans).
Replies from: jooyous, None↑ comment by jooyous · 2013-01-30T08:47:21.726Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I read some of these Chuck Norris-style facts and thought they were hilarious, but was also really carefully trying to check myself to make sure I didn't ... believe one? Accidentally buy a t-shirt?
What I was mainly wondering is what to do about non-rationality-focused communities whose central people do encourage fan behavior in limited but non-thoughtful, non-zero ways. You can't really ... criticize them, because existing fans will jump to defend them. I was thinking of maybe starting an unbiased phyg-ishness index computed in a published way?
Replies from: Emile↑ comment by Emile · 2013-01-30T10:04:51.592Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
How about acting like an adoring fan in but in a tongue-in-cheek self-mocking way? Seems to be what's going on with the Eliezer Yudkowky facts. It may be misinterpreted (see Poe's law ), but could make the fandom a bit more level-headed.
(edit: I also find it pretty plausible that the tongue-in-cheek adoration could make things worse, both through havinf some people take it too seriously anyway, and through evaporative cooling of people who don't find it funny / don't like that kind of humor)
I think admiration for a person is mostly a problem when it's admiration for only one person; our Lord-Savior-God-Combatmaid Eliezer is a fine chap, but so are Richard Feynman, Terry Pratchett, Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robin Hanson, and many others. At least, on a personal level, I find that the response to Marks Of Awesomeness is not being deliberately critical to avoid looking like an adoring fan, but rather to be exposed to more different forms of Awesomeness to to have a better-calibrated sense of Awesomeness. So in a community with a worship problem, it could also help if admiration and respect for other people was also widespread and well accepted.
Replies from: Nornagest, jooyous↑ comment by Nornagest · 2013-01-31T08:05:13.545Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
How about acting like an adoring fan in but in a tongue-in-cheek self-mocking way? Seems to be what's going on with the Eliezer Yudkowky facts. It may be misinterpreted (see Poe's law ), but could make the fandom a bit more level-headed.
Seems risky. I'm not sure how much of the psychology of fandom respects the sincere/tongue-in-cheek distinction, whether from the inside or the outside, and that's a question I'd really want answered before we start leveraging it for social engineering purposes.
↑ comment by jooyous · 2013-01-30T10:23:33.504Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm mostly sure that the facts are mostly harmless; I think they concern me more from a perspective of cached thoughts and maybe a very slow-moving game of Broken Telephone. (You know the way recessive genes hang around at low levels in a population? Probably not at all like that mathematically but similar in sinister-ness!)
I think I mostly agree! But maybe admiring other people isn't quite enough? Because we come here to admire the writings of mostly one central person and during that time, we're not really thinking of anyone else. So I sort of do my admiring in single-person-focused discrete chunks until someone asks me where I hang out on the internet, which occurs more rarely than I hang out on the internet. Which makes me think you need to go through an intentional and somewhat unnatural exercise of calibrating your Awesomeness exposure.
This made me think of something else! I've also come to realize that most of the people I admire and/or fangirl are people I want to meet and get to know. I realized it isn't really worth much to shake someone's hand or have my something signed by the person. All of these cool people have something cool about them and I want in on what makes them cool rather than ... proof of their physical existence?
Replies from: None↑ comment by [deleted] · 2013-01-30T17:48:36.543Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You know the way recessive genes hang around at low levels in a population? Probably not at all like that mathematically but similar in sinister-ness!
What exactly is sinister about recessive genes? Sure, cystic fibrosis, but also blue eyes and certain forms of malaria resistance, yes?
Replies from: jooyouscomment by lukeprog · 2013-01-30T06:19:23.264Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Less Wrong already has a "Google problem" with the phyg word. Would you mind typing "phyg" instead? You can link your first usage here so that anyone who is confused by that is only confused momentarily. (This usage is kinda standard here already.)
Replies from: Manfred, John_Maxwell_IV, Nornagest, jooyous, jooyous, Andreas_Giger↑ comment by Manfred · 2013-01-30T10:01:00.558Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Oh please no, let this not become a persistent thing. We can think for 5 minutes and find a better way.
Synonym substitution: clique, clan, sect. Perfectly serviceable.
Functional replacement: "Balanced approaches to hanging out with highly admired public figures." Also a good choice, may be more clear than calling things "cliqueish," but requires a little more effort than ctrl+f.
Comical google overloading: require all instances to read "cult pancakes" so that the previously mildly bad google autocomplete becomes "lesswrong cult pancakes."
Replies from: Nornagest↑ comment by John_Maxwell (John_Maxwell_IV) · 2013-01-30T09:22:43.476Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If it's the Google autocomplete we're worried about, I don't think it makes sense to restrict onsite usage of the word. Google's autocomplete is populated by what people search on Google for, not what's present on a website, right? Heck, "less wrong" is just a search phrase... I don't think that something is going to pop up after the search phrase "less wrong" just because it happens to get discussed on the domain lesswrong.com a lot, or even because the phrases seem to appear on a lot of web pages together.
If we're worried about people searching for the word and finding a discussion on Less Wrong... who cares? I'm assuming that we're concerned about affecting the impressions of people researching LW itself, not random passerby so much.
If Less Wrong's own site search piggybacks on Google's search and feeds in to its autocomplete, that could potentially be problematic because people might search for discussions of the concept within LW and feed the autocomplete with things we don't want. The solution to this one seems pretty simple: if you're searching the LW archives for something you don't wish to come up on Google's autocomplete, use an obscure and autocomplete-free search engine such as Lycos (which seems to support the "site:yourdomain.com" modifier for within-site search).
If we're worried about people investigating LW and seeing discussions we don't want them to see, then yeah, it may make sense to avoid using the word. So I think the best rationale for "phyg" is: use it so that people can speak freely without having what they say easily available to people searching on Google? Even if your comment is relatively safe for public eyes, perhaps someone will reply and say something un-kosher that will be found and cause people condemn LW unfairly?
Another possible reason is to avoid guilt by association... in other words, brain-association, not Google-association.
Overall, I find these arguments weak compared to the evidence against the policy.
I'll delete this poll and remake it in another comment if someone makes a significant point that I didn't think of.
[pollid:400]
Replies from: Emile↑ comment by Emile · 2013-01-30T13:39:41.306Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I would prefer the option:
We should work around this without inventing new awkward vocabulary
(i.e. as Manfred said, clique, clan, sect, charismatic public figures, fans, etc.)
(and even then I don't think the google keyword problem is a particularly big one, it'd just be a wee bit nicer if we avoided it)
↑ comment by Nornagest · 2013-01-30T07:53:47.041Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I understand the reasoning re: Google search rank and so forth, but I still question the PR implications of maintaining such a strong local taboo around that word that it can only be invoked through the veil of ROT13. Strikes me as a far more eccentric practice than any amount of talk about the psychology of charismatic leadership, and I'd expect casual readers to pick up on that and update their views of its significance accordingly.
Conceivably this might be considered an acceptable tradeoff if there's a low enough ratio of those readers to people that might be turned off by seeing the word-that-must-not-be-named in autocomplete or search results, but that's about the only reasonable case I can think of. It seems unlikely.
Replies from: buybuydandavis↑ comment by buybuydandavis · 2013-01-30T09:47:27.901Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
but I still must say I question the PR implications of maintaining a local taboo around that word of such strength that it can only be referred to through the veil of ROT13.
The most phyggish aspect of this site is the use of the word "phyg".
Replies from: Kawoomba↑ comment by Andreas_Giger · 2013-01-30T10:19:02.614Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Would you mind typing "phyg" instead?
Ia! Ia! Cult fhtagn!
Ia! Ia! Cult fhtagn!
Ia! Ia! Cult fhtagn!
Ia! Ia! Cult fhtagn!