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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.
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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]
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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]
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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).
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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.
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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.)
"It is dangerous to be half a rationalist."
It is dangerous to half-arse this and every other attempt at recovering lesswrong (again).
I take into account the comments before mine which accurately mention several reasons for the problems on lw.
The codebase is not that bad. I know how many people have looked at it; and it's reasonably easy to fix it. I even know how to fix it; but I am personally without the coding skill to implement the specific changes. We are without volunteers willing to make changes; and without funds to pay someone to do them. Trust me. I collated all comments on all of the several times we have tried to collate ideas. We are unfortunately busy people. Working on other goals and other projects.
I think you are wrong about the need for a single Schelling point and I submit as evidence: Crony Beliefs. We have a mesh network where valuable articles do get around. Lesswrong is very much visited by many (as evidence by the comments on this post). When individuals judge information worthy; it makes its way around the network and is added to our history.
A year from now; crony beliefs may not be easy to find on lesswrong because it was never explicitly posted here in text, but it will still be in the minds of anyone active in the diaspora.
Having said all that; I am more than willing to talk to anyone who wants to work on changes or progress via skype. PM me to make a time. @Anna that includes you.
It's true that articles pass around the rationalist network, and if you happen to be in it, you're likely to see some such articles. But if you have something that you'd specifically want the rationalist community to see, and you're not already in the network, it's very hard.
Some time back, I had a friend ask me how to promote their book which they thought might be of interest to the rationalist community. My answer was basically "you could start out by posting about it on LW, but not that many people read LW anymore so after that I can help you out b... (read more)