Communities you might join thread

post by whpearson · 2017-11-25T09:07:09.087Z · LW · GW · 13 comments

Follow up to the Archipelago model of community standards.

If you are interested in different social norms or goals than the current community has, post a comment here. The idea would be to try something and see how it went whilst still keeping in touch with LW/EA sphere.

I thought we could use a schelling point where people could post their ideas and gauge interest.

Seperate out idea posts from meta comments which should be replies to the meta comment.

13 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.

comment by whpearson · 2017-11-25T09:10:37.222Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Long-term Project Community:

A community for people trying to do something with a long horizon. Discussing how to maintain motivation, money, path tracking.

Concepts:

  • Incentive gradient traversers
  • 3+ year projects
Replies from: kulya-botaniki
comment by Куля Ботаніки (kulya-botaniki) · 2017-11-25T16:44:08.015Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

"long horizon" can be people checking the same thing year after year... like demography studies, calibration tracking, or (in my case) re-sampling the same pool of herbarium roots for mycorrhiza counts (it can be found there even after the plant is dried, but nobody knows how much of it is lost.) Do you think that, for example, 10-years-long projects and 12-y-l ones will have different problems? Do you think that people should start long-term projects after their children grow to a certain age?

Replies from: whpearson
comment by whpearson · 2017-11-25T22:35:19.782Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

>Do you think that, for example, 10-years-long projects and 12-y-l ones will have different problems?

I can't think of projects that would do, but their might be some. Projects that last longer than a life time would have a different problem.

Different project types seem to have different problems. Some might need a large amount of work and resources put in continuously (large scale artwork) they need to secure lots of funding up front. Other sorts of projects, such as programming, might be able to be scaled up or down as fits your life, but the big problem is not stopping all together or making sure you are building something that is actually valuable (to you).

>Do you think that people should start long-term projects after their children grow to a certain age?

Long term projects and kids is something I have been thinking about. The danger in waiting is forgetting about the project when that time comes. You could imagine a social calendar where people celebrate each other's projects birthdays and people who are waiting for a reason (like kids) can put on when they plan to start their project.

comment by whpearson · 2017-12-10T12:27:41.316Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Where my effort is going to end up going is here.

A group of people interested in more secure, usable computer architecture.

comment by Gordon Seidoh Worley (gworley) · 2017-11-27T21:25:21.332Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Sure, I'll share a general category of subcommunity I've been a part of at various times. It doesn't always hang together in one particular form, but it's popped up a few times that I know of.

The broader LW community is pretty down on half-baked ideas that don't conform to certain ingroup patterns or that are not put forward by people already widely recognized as part of the ingroup. Sometimes, though, it's nice to have people you can talk about half-baked ideas with who won't focus on shooting you down exclusively because in its current form the idea looks like a thing LW needs to keep out. At the same time, being a rationalist, it's hard to find other communities where you can have a fairly high level of trust that people are taking your ideas as seriously as you do and not pretending to understand when they don't. So sometimes people form LW open idea subgroups.

The main criteria for being part of such a subgroup is demonstrated rationality skills and openness to new ideas. Unfortunately they deteriorate over time as new members widen the group rationality skill/openness bubble until the group becomes not open enough, too open, or too low skilled. Then after a while when the existing group has ceased to be able to serve its purpose someone starts a new one and the cycle repeats.

comment by whpearson · 2017-11-25T09:27:58.416Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Programmatic approaches to Intelligence Alignment

I think there might be space for a community here.

I want to link it to improving autonomy for two reason.

1) There needs to be some end goal that looks pleasant for the majority people or it will rightly get a lot of push back

2) There is a chance to have a set of values spread as the technology spreads. Helping others become self-reliant is something important to me for various reasons.

comment by whpearson · 2017-11-25T09:11:52.076Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Meta comment. Post a reply to this comment if it is not just a community idea.

Replies from: Raemon, Raemon, whpearson, Chris_Leong
comment by Raemon · 2017-11-27T22:04:05.036Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

FYI, I have a number of thoughts on what sort of communities I want to join or create, but the thoughts sort of blur together. Part of it is about specific goals I want to work on together, part of it is about clusters of norms that I'm interested in cultivating in myself, and in trusting people around me to uphold.

I will most likely be posting my thoughts in a more comprehensive post. I may do some brainstorming here but the "one comment per community idea" works slightly against that.

Replies from: whpearson
comment by whpearson · 2017-11-28T19:17:10.398Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

As there isn't huge amount of interest I shall relax the "one comment per community idea" rule.

It was mainly so that conversation would be more focused.

comment by Raemon · 2017-11-25T16:42:30.366Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Is your interest more in online or in person?

Replies from: whpearson
comment by whpearson · 2017-11-25T22:21:29.926Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Online can be nice because of asynchronicity.

But I suspect in person might be needed to start things, in either case.

comment by whpearson · 2017-11-25T09:14:37.971Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I realistically only have time for one community (especially if I am trying to set it up), so I'm only likely to try executing on 0-1 of these, but I am curious what other people want.

comment by Chris_Leong · 2017-11-25T23:19:23.288Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I know that you linked to a post, but it would probably be worthwhile to write up a brief motivation or clarification of what you mean.