LW started out as a site where rationality itself was the main topic of discussion. It has since devolved somewhat, into a site dominated by open-ended discussion, but in which certain rational practices still dominate. The danger of a policy of anti-elitism, at a time when the original mission of the site has been somewhat obscured by all the diverse enthusiasms of the community, is that it could complete the devolution of the site into a forum where rationality dominates neither in content nor in practice. The "elitist" current may just be the selfishness of people who don't want to share a good thing, but it does serve to prevent that final dilution.
The flow of this post is very strange. You are starting with extensive use of a word without clarifying its intended sense, then proceed to enumerate its possible dictionary senses. The problem that you get to eventually seems to be the fact that in at least some of the legitimate senses, "elitism" is a denotationally correct characterization of some of the LW-related behaviors, but there are associated negative connotations, possibly incorrect ones. Yet the post doesn't seem to address this problem, and its end is a collection of calls to shift in attitude whose content and motivation remain unclear.
Is the plan to make the advanced area password protected and only give the password to the worthy? Will people be able to read but not comment unless they have enough karma?
Also, any time you want to use a dictionary definition to make your point, don't. It's obnoxious and unhelpful. It skews your argument from being about reality to being about words.
You talk about elitists getting treated like scum, and yet all over the world people earn high salaries and are treated like princes for being "elite" in dozens of fields. Being elite is being awesome. We WANT people who want to be awesome, and don't want people who think that being awesome sucks.
Using rationality as a basis for rule makes no sense anyway. If you have a better map of the territory, people should update because you have a better map (assuming you overcome inferential distances). Forcing an update because you want to rule would only amount to an appeal to authority or coercion. That's not rational. If you show them a more complete map and they update, that isn't about you - you should be updating your map when the time comes, too. It's the territory that rules us all. You are only sharing your map.
I can't even figure out what you mean by this quote. If people aren't rational, and don't update, then the rulers should be the ones who DO.
Who is with me?
Apparently you are still not getting that this is a wrong question to ask here. Try something less polarizing, like "what do you think of this suggestion?"
Additionally, feel free to work on your writing style. Like, creating a reasonable summary upfront is generally not a bad idea. Having a title that reflects your main point often works. Reviewing what other people here wrote about the same topic (multiple tiers) and quoting them also strikes me as sensible, though maybe a bit advanced for a new participant.
I guess you really do want to improve me.
No, not really. I just want to enjoy reading this forum, and your posts interfere with this enjoyment, probably because your ego/skills ratio is too high, at least in my opinion. You are clearly intelligent enough to produce quality contributions (maybe not as good as Yvain's, but few here can match him). Unfortunately, your inflated estimate of how good you are gets in the way. Plus your combative style could use some improvement.
I don't think the problem is my ego. Mostly because I can admit that I can't figure out in advance how LessWrong is going to react.
Of the 6 posts you've submitted so far, 5 were meta-discussion, and 4 were calls to change Less Wrong. My hunch is that the overall response you're seeing is mostly determined by that. Try sticking to writing only about substantial issues for a while.
The word "elitism" is vague and affect-laden. In order to have a productive conversation about the set of topics that the label "elitism" vaguely points towards, it is necessary to set aside that term and get into specifics, rather than letting the conversation revolve around the word "elitism".
Before you started posting on Less Wrong, the word "elitism" (and its variants) rarely appeared on the website. You introduced the word to the conversation (e.g., here), and you have used it again and again (over a hundred times, according to your comment history). That is why some people have expressed their opinions in terms of the word "elitism" (where their opinion, roughly, is that they want Less Wrong to have high quality content). So if you just want people to stop using the word "elitism", you should be able to accomplish that (for the most part) by not using the word "elitism."
You let yourself get sidetracked from your goal of growing Less Wrong and decided to lead a largely irrelevant side conversation centered on the word "elitism" (what it means, whether it applies to Less Wrong, whether people mi...
This post is currently tied for eighth most downvoted of all time (-22), while your original post on growing LW is tied for 25th most upvoted post of all time (+49). If you could figure out how to induce those responses at will, you could play us like a yoyo. :-)
As far as I can tell, you're trying to use standard arguments and appeals to emotion and group membership. LWers, as a general rule, come here because it's a community that mostly ignores those appeals. LW is one of very few places I've come across where this is the case.
In general, the most effective thing I think you could do to improve your posts and comments would be to use more specific claims and back them up with specific evidence. You're doing a great job of creating outlines before you post, and with translating your ideas into simple language (really, we do appreciate that). You could work a bit on being concise: there's no need to write an essay just to ask if we should have more areas than just Discussion and Main.
Another, specific thing relating to this post: taboo "elitist" and all synonyms. You already started to reduce elitism to the parts that were bad, and I think you could benefit by going a bit further with that thread.
Finally, we kind of do have a third level: the biweekly open threads. This probably belongs there.
I don't think people who feel comfortable posting average youtube comments are going to be welcome or useful at LessWrong, I don't think this is a problem, and there are a lot of people like that.
Raising the sanity waterline on a grand scale should affect the comments on youtube, but we're a long way from that.
This being said, I'd like to see more rationality materials for people of average intelligence, but that's another long term possibility. Not does there not seem to be huge interest in the project, figuring out simple explanations for new ideas is work, and it seems to be be a relatively rare talent.
I only recently ran into a good simple explanation for Bayes-- that the more detailed a prediction becomes, the less likely it is to be true. And I got it from a woman who doesn't post on LW because she thinks the barriers to entry are too high. (It's possible that this explanation was on LW, and I didn't see it or it didn't register--- has anyone seen it here?)
There's some degree of natural sorting on LW-- I'm not the only person who doesn't read the more mathematical or technical material here, and I'm not commenting on that material, either.
I don't think having separate ranked areas is going to solve the problem of people living down to expectations.
I'm not really sure what your point is with this post.
These are the reasons I choose to be non-abusive and to send a message to the world that non-abusive intellectuals exist.
If it's just that, I think the post would benefit from better focus. More likely, it would be better to conclude with something more related to the content of the post itself.
Also, I'm not sure how this
I have noticed a current of elitism on LessWrong.
jives with this
...If people tell you that you're an elitist because you want a challenging social environment to learn in, or
I don't think the beginner / advanced distinction covers why many here are fine with being called "elitist" (I know I am!). There's also a good attitude / bad attitude distinction. If someone is intellectually lazy , or only wants to rant about one topic (politics or racism or open source or religion ...), or enjoys getting into fights, or just wants to make dumb jokes, then I'd rather they go post somewhere else. And yes, such people will invariably complain about elitism when made felt unwelcome, so the mere presence of accusations of elitism d...
I don't think it's useful to argue about the word "elitism" any longer. I think most people already agree with most of the points in your post about "elitism" except for the actual actions we should take as a result.
I think that the problem with making a beginner and advanced section is basically shame. In lieu of a quantifiable metric that classifies people into the two sections (not likely) it's going to be very hard for people in the "lower" section to admit that the people in the "higher" section are actually b...
Rationalist taboo style explanation of how my perceptions of "elitism" developed:
I started out in life with disadvantages that I had to overcome. I am also gifted, but didn't know that until my mid twenties. I lived in a rich, privileged town and there were a majority of rich, privileged children in my school. Because I was disadvantaged, I never made friends with privileged children or teens. They were wearing Gap while I was wearing resale shop finds. If they ever used the word "elite" to describe themselves, I didn't know it. W...
Y'know, you don't even begin to compete with the lowest-rated post. Not that that's an invitation to try.
Note: After writing this post, I realized there's a lot I need to learn about this subject. I've been thinking a lot about how I use the word "elitism" and what it meant to me. I was unaware that there are a large number of people who use the word to describe themselves and mean something totally different from the definition that I had. This resulted in my perception that people who were using the word to describe themselves were being socially inept. I now realize that it's not a matter of social ineptness, that it may be more of a matter of political sides. I also realized that mind-kill reactions may be influencing us here (myself included). So, now my goal is to make sure I understand both sides thoroughly to transcend these mind-kill reactions and explain to others how I accomplished this so that none of us has to have them. I think these sides can get along better. That is what I ultimately want - for the gifted population and the rest of the world to understand one another better, for the privileged and the disadvantaged to understand one another better, and for the tensions between those groups to be reduced so that we can work together effectively. I realize that this is not a simple undertaking, but this is a very important problem to me. I see this being an ongoing project in my life. If I don't seem to understand your point of view on this topic, please help me update. I want to understand it.
TLDR: OMG a bunch of people seem to want to use the word "elitist" to describe LessWrong but I know that this can provoke hatred. I don't want to be smeared as an elitist. I can't fathom why it would be necessary for us to call ourselves "elitists".
I have noticed a current of elitism on LessWrong. I know that not every person here is an elitist, but there are enough people here who seem to believe elitism is a good thing (13 upvotes!?) that it's worth addressing this conflict. In my experience, the word "elitism" is a triggering word - it's not something you can use easily without offending people. Acknowledging intellectual differences is a touchy subject also, very likely to invite accusations of elitism. From what I've seen, I'm convinced that using the word "elitism" casually is a mistake, and referring to intellectual differences incautiously is also risky.
Here, I analyze the motives behind the use of the word elitism, make a suggestion for what the main conflict is, mention a possible solution, talk about whether the solution is elitist, what elitism really means, and what the consequences may be if we allow ourselves to be seen as elitists.
The theme I am seeing echoed throughout the threads where elitist comments surfaced is "We want quality" and "We want a challenging learning environment". I agree that quality goals and a challenging environment are necessary for refining rationality, but I disagree that elitism is needed.
I think the problem comes in at the point where we think about how challenging the environment should be. There's a conflict between the website's main vision: spreading rationality (detailed in: Rationality: Common Interest of Many Causes) and striving for the highest quality standards possible (detailed in Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism).
If the discussions are geared for beginners, advanced people will not learn. If the discussions are geared for advanced people, beginners are frustrated. It's built into our brains. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of "Flow: The psychology of optimal experience" regards flow, the feeling of motivation and pleasure you get when you're appropriately challenged, to be the secret to happiness and he explains that if you aren't appropriately challenged, you're either going to feel bored or frustrated depending on whether the challenge is too small or too great for your ability level.
Because our brains never stop rewarding and punishing us with flow, boredom and frustration, we strive for that appropriate challenge constantly. Because we're not all at the same ability level, we're not all going to flow during the same discussions. We can't expect this to change, and it's nobody's fault.
This is a real conflict, but we don't have to choose between the elitist move of blocking everyone that's not at our level vs. the flow killing move of letting the challenge level in discussions decrease to the point where it results in everyone's apathy - we can solve this.
Why bother to solve it? If your hope is to raise the sanity waterline, you cannot neglect those who are interested in rational thought but haven't yet gotten very far. Doing so would limit your impact to a small group, failing to make a dent in overall sanity. If you neglect the small group of advanced rationalists, then you've lost an important source of rational insights that people at every level might learn from and you will have failed to attract the few and precious teachers who will assist the beginners in developing further faster.
And there is a solution; summarized in one paragraph: Make several areas divided by their level of difficulty. Advanced learners can learn in the advanced area, beginners in the beginner area. That way everyone learns. Not every advanced person is a teacher, but if you put a beginner area and an advanced area on the same site, some people from the advanced area will help get the beginners further. One-on-one teaching isn't the only option - advanced people might write articles for beginners and get through to thousands at once. They might write practice quizzes for them to do (not hard to implement from a web developer's perspective). There are other things. (I won't get into them here.)
This brings me to another question: if LessWrong separates the learning levels, would the separation qualify as elitism?
I think we can all agree that people don't learn well in classes that are too easy for them. If you want advanced people to improve, it's an absolute necessity to have an advanced area. I'm not questioning that. I'm questioning whether it qualifies under the definition of elitism:
Spreading rationality empowers people. If you wanted to take power over them, you'd horde it. By posting our rational insights in public, we share them. We are not hoarding them and demanding to be made rulers because of our power. We are giving them away and hoping they improve the world.
Using rationality as a basis for rule makes no sense anyway. If you have a better map of the territory, people should update because you have a better map (assuming you overcome inferential distances). Forcing an update because you want to rule would only amount to an appeal to authority or coercion. That's not rational. If you show them a more complete map and they update, that isn't about you - you should be updating your map when the time comes, too. It's the territory that rules us all. You are only sharing your map.
For the second definition, there are two pieces. "Consciousness of or pride in" and "select or favored group". I can tell you one thing for certain: if you form a group of intellectual elitists, they will not be considered "select or favored" by the general population. They will be treated as the scum on the bottom of scum's shoe.
For that reason, any group of intellectual elitists will quickly become an oxymoron. First, they'll have to believe that they are "select and favored" when they are not, and perhaps justify this with "we are so deserving of being select and favored that no one can see it but us" (which may make them hopelessly unable to update). Second, the attitude of superiority is likely to provoke such anti-intellectual counter-prejudice that the resulting oppression could make them ineffectual. Powerless to get anywhere because they are so hated, their "superiority" will make them into second class citizens. You don't achieve elite status by being an intellectual elitist.
In the event that LessWrong was considered "select" or "favored" by the outside population, would "consciousness" of that qualify the members as elitists? If you use the literal definition of "consciousness", you can claim a literal "yes" - but it would mean that simply acknowledging a (hypothetical) fact (independent market research surveys, we'll say) should be taken as automatic proof that you're an arrogant scumbag. That would be committing Yvain's "worst argument in the world", guilt by association. We can't assume that everyone who acknowledges popularity or excellence is guilty of wrongdoing.
So let's ask this: Why does elitism have negative connotations? What does it REALLY mean when people call a group of intellectuals "elitists"?
I think the answer to this is in Jane Elliot's brown eyes, blue eyes experiment. If you're not familiar with it, a school teacher named Jane Elliot, horrified by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. decided to teach her class a lesson about prejudice. She divided the class into two groups - brown eyes and blue eyes. She told them things like brown eyed kids are smarter and harder-working than blue eyed kids. The children reacted dramatically:
When people complain of elitism, what they seem to be reacting to is a concern that feeling "better than others" will be used as an excuse for abuse - either via coercion, or by sabotaging their sense of self-worth and intellectual performance.
The goal of LessWrong is to spread rationality in order to make a bigger difference in the world. This has nothing to do with abusing people. Just because some people with advanced abilities choose to use them as an excuse to abuse other people, it doesn't mean that anybody here has to do that. Just because some of us might have advanced abilities and are also aware of them does not mean we need to commit Yvain's "the worst argument in the world" by assuming the guilt that comes with elitism. We can reject this sort of thinking. If people tell you that you're an elitist because you want a challenging social environment to learn in, or because you want to make the project that is the LessWrong blog as high quality as it can be, you can refuse to be labeled guilty.
Refusing to be guilty by association takes more work than accepting the status quo but what would happen if we allowed ourselves to be disrespected for challenging ourselves and striving for quality? If we agree with them, we're viewing positive character traits as part of a problem. That encourages people to shoot themselves in the foot - and they can point that same gun at all of humanity's potential, demanding that nobody seeks the challenging social environment they need to grow, that nobody sets any learning goals to strive for because quality standards are elitist. To allow a need for challenges and standards to be smeared as elitist will only hinder the spread of rationality.
How many may forgo refining rationality because they worry it will make them look like an elitist?
These are the reasons I choose to be non-abusive and to send a message to the world that non-abusive intellectuals exist.
What do you think of this?