Linkpost: Rat Traps by Sheon Han in Asterisk Mag
post by Chris_Leong · 2024-12-03T03:22:45.424Z · LW · GW · 5 commentsThis is a link post for https://asteriskmag.com/issues/08/rat-traps
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5 comments
Subtitle: Does the rationalist blogosphere need to update?
5 comments
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comment by Chris_Leong · 2024-12-03T03:24:50.245Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
My take: Bits of this review come off as a bit too status-oriented to me. This is ironic, because the best part of the review is towards the end when it talks about the risk of rationality becoming a Fandom.
Replies from: gwern↑ comment by gwern · 2024-12-03T22:31:06.810Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yes, basically. It is well-written and funny (of course), but a lot of it is wrong. What was, say, the last "article explaining Bayes" you saw on LW, which is a central example of his of the staleness and repetition killing LW? Would I find 3 or 4 new articles on how "Bayes's theorem is like a burrito" if I go over to the Main page right now...?* (Personally, I wouldn't mind reviving some more Bayes on LW these days, and I have an idea for one myself [LW(p) · GW(p)].)
And saying we weren't weird to begin with but have gotten weirder...? I have no idea how he could have gotten that idea - trust me when I say that people on LW used to be a lot weirder, or hey, no need to do that - just go crack open a copy of Great Mambo Chicken or ask a question like 'was a larger percentage of LW signed up for cryonics in 2009 or in 2024?' Sorry, everyone who joined post-MoR, but you're just a lot more normal and less weird than the OG LWers like Hanson or Clippy or Yudkowsky or even Roko. (Yes, you still have a shot at a normal life & happiness, but your posts are not remotely as unhinged, so who's to say who's better off in the end?)
* that was rhetorical, but I of course checked anyway and of the first 30 or 40 posts, the only one that even comes close to being about Bayesianism seems to be https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KSdqxrrEootGSpKKE/the-solomonoff-prior-is-malign-is-a-special-case-of-a [LW · GW] which is not very much at all.
Replies from: FiftyTwo↑ comment by FiftyTwo · 2024-12-07T15:12:32.580Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Was rereading a bunch of early 2010s LW recently, prompted by getting a reply on one of my old comments, and its definitely weird. But the flavor of weird feels different somehow? A lot more earnest and direct, and with people more willing to make silly jokes and tangents.
There were also more top level posts along the lines of "Here's this new rationality technique I've been trying, what do people think?" It feels less, high context, I guess? A lot of current discussion is people immersed in some wider meta debate with long established sides and real world stakes to it.
I imagine that kind of posting wouldn't work particularly well these days given that the environment around it has changed.
comment by Ben Pace (Benito) · 2024-12-04T00:22:01.090Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Reading this post reminds me of my standard online heuristic: just because someone is spending a lot of effort writing about you, does not mean that it is worth a minute of your time to read it.
(This is of course a subset of the general heuristic that most writing has nothing worth reading in it; but it bears keeping in mind that this doesn't change when the writing is about you.)
Replies from: Viliam↑ comment by Viliam · 2024-12-04T09:28:43.902Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yeah, I am not even sure what was the point of the article. What is the thing we are supposed to update about? Writing in a different style, or changing our opinions (about what exactly?), or finding completely new topics to talk about so that we are not boring the article author, or...?