-
The world is locked right now in a deadly puzzle, and needs something like a miracle of good thought if it is to have the survival odds one might wish the world to have.
-
Despite all priors and appearances, our little community (the "aspiring rationality" community; the "effective altruist" project; efforts to create an existential win; etc.) has a shot at seriously helping with this puzzle. This sounds like hubris, but it is at this point at least partially a matter of track record.[1]
-
To aid in solving this puzzle, we must probably find a way to think together, accumulatively. We need to think about technical problems in AI safety, but also about the full surrounding context -- everything to do with understanding what the heck kind of a place the world is, such that that kind of place may contain cheat codes and trap doors toward achieving an existential win. We probably also need to think about "ways of thinking" -- both the individual thinking skills, and the community conversational norms, that can cause our puzzle-solving to work better. [2]
-
One feature that is pretty helpful here, is if we somehow maintain a single "conversation", rather than a bunch of people separately having thoughts and sometimes taking inspiration from one another. By "a conversation", I mean a space where people can e.g. reply to one another; rely on shared jargon/shorthand/concepts; build on arguments that have been established in common as probably-valid; point out apparent errors and then have that pointing-out be actually taken into account or else replied-to).
-
One feature that really helps things be "a conversation" in this way, is if there is a single Schelling set of posts/etc. that people (in the relevant community/conversation) are supposed to read, and can be assumed to have read. Less Wrong used to be a such place; right now there is no such place; it seems to me highly desirable to form a new such place if we can.
-
We have lately ceased to have a "single conversation" in this way. Good content is still being produced across these communities, but there is no single locus of conversation, such that if you're in a gathering of e.g. five aspiring rationalists, you can take for granted that of course everyone has read posts such-and-such. There is no one place you can post to, where, if enough people upvote your writing, people will reliably read and respond (rather than ignore), and where others will call them out if they later post reasoning that ignores your evidence. Without such a locus, it is hard for conversation to build in the correct way. (And hard for it to turn into arguments and replies, rather than a series of non sequiturs.)
Given the communities initial heavy interest in the heuristic & biases research, I am amused that there is no explicit mention of the sunk cost policy. Seriously, watch out for that.
My opinion is that revitalizing the community is very likely to fail, and I am neutral on whether it's worth to try anyways by current prominent rationalists. A lot of people are suggesting to restore the website with a more centralized structure. It should be obvious the result won't work the same as the old Less Wrong.
Finally, a reminder on Less Wrong history, which suggests that we lost more than a group of high-quality posters: Less Wrong wasn't always a polyamory hub. It became that way because there was a group of people who seriously believed they could improve the way they think, a few noticed they didn't have any good reason to be monogamous, set out to convince the others, and succeeded. Do you think a change of that scale will ever happen in the future of the rationalist community?
I don't buy that account of the history as being complete. Many people in the rationality community have contact with other communities that also have a higher prevalence of polyamory. The vegan community also has a higher share of polygamous people.