Be sure to screen shot any comment you make that you want to preserve, or comments by others that should be preserved. LessWrong is now the sort of site where critical comments silently vanish that cannot by any sane stretch be called trolling.
If your concern is public relations, systematically deleting critique is amongst the stupidest things I can think of you doing. This is the Internet, where that sort of behaviour ensures preservation. A bot to automatically preserve all comments to LW would be ridiculously simple, for example, if MIRI could no longer be trusted to be honest.
Really, MIRI. Just what the hell do you think you're achieving with this?
I worked on and off for SI as a contractor; currently, I'm not. (Not that that should justify deleting comments.)
That might be a bit drastic, but I too am worried about the deletion of perfectly legitimate (IMO) discussion.
Do keep in mind that screenshots are not always reliable, though.
Oh, absolutely :-) Multiple saved copies are a little more trustworthy.
Capturebot2 is reasonably trustworthy for its intended purpose (documenting the sort of site that actually gets into a habit of trying to burn the evidence). Of course, I'm saying that as one of the two people who in fact has the power to edit Capturebot's saved PNGs ...
I keep being told that there are no resources for my ideas for automatically fighting trolls, so after a user admits to being a troll I've been going through manually and deleting comments that strike me as trollish - in the sense of intended to provoke. I also suspect we have fake accounts upvoting and hence do not refrain from deleting upvoted comments.
I'm not particularly happy with the way things are, but don't see an obvious way to make them better without somebody being willing to devote an awful lot of full-time-equivalent work to modifying the LW codebase.
And yes, this forum practices (gasp!) censorship. It always has since the day I started deleting Caledonian's comments on Overcoming Bias because he was successfully making posting no-longer-fun for me. Before that, the SL4 mailing list was subject to threads frequently being terminated. We have always been up-front about pruning the tree, and nowadays there's an official Deletion Policy page. Please stop acting like this is some sort of shocking surreptitious secret.
http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Deletion_policy
Note that this includes deletion of replies to trolls, although I often just downvote those instead.
It woul...
My experience has been exactly contrary: young communities thrive without gardening, but as they grow they either devolve into low average value (digg as it was, most large subreddits) or are heavily pruned (HN, r/askscience). If there's an influx of people, heavy moderation is mandatory if you want to avoid regression to the mean.
If your concern is public relations, systematically deleting critique is amongst the stupidest things I can think of you doing.
On the gripping hand, systematically refraining from deleting (or better, shadowbanning) trolls is one of the stupidest things you can do if you want to maintain a community.
I'm relatively certain (>95%) that Dymitry/Private_messaging gets special treatment (ie. deletion) because the admins consider him a troll. The point of deleting even his reasonable comments would be to get him to stop commenting at all. I'm not aware of any other LessWrong users who are considered trolls by the site admins.
I'm relatively certain (>95%) that Dymitry/Private_messaging gets special treatment (ie. deletion) because the admins consider him a troll.
They're right to do so.
I'm not aware of any other LessWrong users who are considered trolls by the site admins.
There are certainly some others, but I'm not sure naming names is really appropriate.
Didn't Will_Newsome say several times that he was trolling and post material designed to get downvoted? Not sure that's quite a comparison to eridu.
(To give a recent example, we banned a user from #lesswrong for mailbombing with porn sites another user; they did this partially because they were offended and partially to get themselves banned and stop spending time there. The ban is perfectly justified, yet I would not have called them a troll before or after.)
Didn't Will_Newsome say several times that he was trolling and post material designed to get downvoted? Not sure that's quite a comparison to eridu.
Yes, he did. No, I wasn't comparing them to each other, but it is the case that unlike eridu or Dmytry, Will_Newsome did not trigger the “since he posted lots of trollish comments, let's delete reasonable comments by him as well” reaction in the mods, as far as I can remember.
One example after I posted that comment: Capture, burnt remains. There's been a pile of others (mostly not in fact Dmytry, before you make that claim), but the current site code no longer leaves a really embarrassingly obvious string of "Comment deleted".
Really, are you seriously claiming you thought I was just making it up?
Really, are you seriously claiming you thought I was just making it up?
Requesting evidence is good behavior and should not be discouraged.
Requesting evidence is good behavior. Combining it with a counteraccusation of trolling slides the whole comment into the negative, for me.
Anatoly is right. Accusation without proof is trolling, even if the proof exists. Thank you for providing at least a small part. But why so coy about the others?
So, I mentioned here that I might write a "(pure) mathematics for rationalists" post. Would other people be interested in such a post, and if so, what sort of concerns would you want it to address? If there are lots of LWers trying to learn mathematics I would also like to know what their goals are in doing so.
(Edit, 2/10: Thanks for the responses, everyone. I'm in the process of writing this.)
I'm interested in heuristics for assembling or specific suggestions for a ruthless course aimed for giving a well-rounded math education (that doesn't trade thorough understanding of a diverse set of tools for better expertise in any particular area).
For example, I find the following techniques useful:
- Focus on the simplest texts I don't yet understand well, not on the hardest texts I can follow
- Assemble a list of leading US and UK schools and make sure that I've considered topics and textbooks mentioned in their curricula
- Given a text, find related texts with Amazon's "Customers also bought these" lists, in Amazon reviews, with web search
- Don't miss the "gems", which are often not mentioned in standard courses, but can be found on blogs and forums
- Look for lists of recommended books (there are surprisingly few of such lists that are of any value)
What makes specific recommendations valuable for me:
- Particularly good texts that may be absent from standard curricula, such as Pierce's "Introduction to Information Theory", Courant & Robbins's "What Is Mathematics?", Stillwell's texts, Needham's "Visual Complex Analysis", Hilbert
There are various meta-level questions left unanswered by textbooks, such as "how do I go about deciding which textbooks to read in a particular subject," "how do I go about deciding which subjects to study," "what resources other than textbooks are good for learning math," and "say, what's the big picture here, anyway?" The goal would not be to regurgitate the content of any particular textbook.
I also expect rationalists to be more goal-oriented than most people, so my recommendations for them would be different from my recommendations for people who just want to learn whatever math is cool and interesting. My recommendations would depend heavily on what those goals are, which is why I'd like to know what those goals are.
"how do I go about deciding which textbooks to read in a particular subject,"
You probably know this anyway Qiaochu, given your involvement in the various math stackexchanges. But others here might find it useful.
This is my Google search string for mathematics textbooks on the stackexchanges:
"coding theory" books | book | reading | texts | list | "reference request" site:math.stackexchange.com | site:stats.stackexchange.com | site:mathoverflow.net | site:crypto.stackexchange.com | site:quant.stackexchange.com | site:scicomp.stackexchange.com | site:cstheory.stackexchange.com | site:cs.stackexchange.com
Replace "coding theory" with the area you want to learn, and you end up getting a nice list.
LessWrong has a lot of threads that go like:
Someone: "Gee, it would sure be nice if we had this cool new feature on LessWrong!"
EY/similar person: "Gee, it sure would. Too bad we don't have any development resources."
How would one go about volunteering to do this sort of thing?
I assume that if volunteer work is accepted, it would require testing to prove that it is a quality and non-malicious change before they actually run it on the servers.
I attempted to volunteer (I'm a web developer) but that didn't go anywhere. First, I wanted to help LW grow (in my "LessWrong could grow a lot" thread). Then I realized that LW was at serious risk for eternal September and growing it would risk hastening progress toward cultural collapse. So, I did several more threads on that to see if anyone had good arguments about us not being at risk, or good suggestions on how to stop it. I compiled a list of suggestions and held a vote asking people whether they think there is a significant risk and which solution, if any, they wanted. The result was that the majority of respondents think there is a significant risk, and this was presented to Luke, but he said he doesn't want to do anything at this time.
That was, to put it mildly, a bit of a buzz kill in regards to my volunteering energy level.
My advice to you is to make sure of the following things:
That you and Luke (yes, Luke seems to be the contact person) both agree on a project that is to be done. Luke liked the idea of growing LW, but he didn't like the idea of preventing cultural collapse. I can't, in good conscience, grow LW if there is a significant risk of it c
So... this is a really personal issue and I'm not sure I have any business bringing it up here, but I'm going to anyway:
I've been on and off suicidal for the past 8 or so years (I'm 18, btw), but I've been especially depressed for the last couple of months. My exact emotions are pretty complicated and the motivations behind my death wish differ from moment to moment. 2 days ago I decided to commit to killing myself and I've spent the time between then and now readying myself for suicide. In the past 10 minutes I've had a change of heart brought on by guilt.
Help.
I imagine the wise thing to do would be to seek professional assistance, but I don't want to for various reasons. I've told several friends that I want to die, but they don't really believe me because of the casual way I bring it up and my disposition towards seeking attention. There was a case of suicide by someone in this community awhile ago and I believe some of the commenters on that thread offered to talk to anyone who was feeling self destructive, but that was some time ago, so I'd like to inquire as to whether the offer still stands.
I think I'm likely to have more in common with the average Lesswronger than with an...
It is ok and not at all inappropriate to seek help here. I myself suffer from depression, so I do know the kind of pain you`re in- right now, as I write this post, I nearly weep tears of sorrow for the fact that you hurt so much right now, and my heart flies out to you.
Please do not kill yourself!
Although it may seem very far away right now, the pain can go away, and you can be happy again. As for an immediate plan of action I would recommend the following things:
first, numb the pain so you do not get worse. Thats not a longterm-solution, its just until this cry of help does help you. What worked for me was watching old TV-Series and Starcraft-2 casts.
second: I certainly do not know your reasons why you do not wish to seek seek professional assistance, but I do understand this reluctance of yours. I myself needed over a year to make the call; a time which I now wish to be much shorter. So i ask you to reconsider: professional help is the fastest form of sustainable relief you can get and is probably the best method to minimize the total amount of suffering. For this, I would find it fantastical if you would not only talk about the reasons why you hurt, but also about the r
It is ok and not at all inappropriate to seek help here.
I think it is. We are not suicide experts, we know nothing about how to help, and our attempts to help can easily backfire. And this is assuming that we are not being trolled, attacked, or drama queened (anyone can say that they have contributions under another account). Let us recall that pdf23ds asked for LW help with his sleep problems which did nothing, and LWers attempting to follow up on his posted suicide note apparently did not solve the problem.
The big sites like Wikipedia generally have a policy of:
- not encouraging amateurs to engage in therapy-over-the-internet and other-optimization
- having the admins escalate to looking up IP addresses and contacting locals
- providing the concerned user with a suicide hotline number
I don't see any reason that this should not be implemented on LW as well.
It changed the way I thought about everything. I had to reanalyze every belief I held and was far too busy doing that to be particularly sad.
More importantly though, it gave me hope. The general air of optimism and confidence and defiance made me feel proud to be a part of it. Before finding this place, the thing that bothered me most about life was that it was absolutely certain to end. After reading the Methods of Rationality, I realized that I didn't have to go down without a fight so long as I had even a chance of winning.
Besides all that, Lesswrong gave me a sense of belonging. People here seem so similar to me, which is a pretty rare thing. Some of them seem atypical in almost exactly the way I'm atypical. Their quirks are basically my quirks. And the way they act, you'd get the idea that they think those things actually make them better people. It's a pretty powerful emotion when you come across it for the first time.
I gave a talk in Chicago on using Ideological Turing Tests to avoid some mindkill-y problems and have better, more interesting arguments. The video is now up.
In an Ideological Turing Test, you answer one set of questions honestly and another as your best model of your ideological opponent. It's a nice way to spot and burn strawmen and to get curious about why your opponent thinks the thing zer does instead of just angry that they won't concede. Other material included: tips on skipping generic argument scripts and cribbing from LARPing to build a line of retreat.
Would this be of interest as a discussion post? I assume anyone interested just pops over chez moi to read up.
Since its inception in early 2009, has this community ever (1) changed its collective opinion on something (2) had a debate in which there were two sides and there was a clear victor?
(1) I am hesitant to describe this community as having collective opinions, and (2) do the Amanda Knox posts count?
Fun example of the bystander effect in everyday life: last night, I hosted a Twelfth Night party, where people came over and all read the the play aloud and ate boozy cake ("Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there will be no more cakes and ale?")
We all had a lovely time, and someone asked why we hadn't done this before. And I realized that it was because Shakespeare could happen any time, so we were never pushed to schedule it any particular time. We only managed Twelfth Night because it's pegged to the actual holiday of Twelfth Night.
In some kind of identity crisis I am looking for a well-paying, preferably mathematical, career where I can use broad knowledge of physics, biology, chemistry, cognitive science, economics ... I was thinking actuary or statistician. Any similar thoughts?
I was thinking whether Mensa could be used for CFAR purposes (raising the rationality waterline), and I would like to hear your opinions. Also, I am interested how many LWers are in Mensa, and how many think that Mensa is useful for anything more than satisfying social needs of its members.
For me personally, Mensa was a huge disappointment. (I am not sure how much that reflects only Mensa in Slovakia, and how much applies for other countries too. I know many people in other countries are disappointed too, but it also seems to me that Mensa in other countries does more useful activities.) The easiest way to explain it is that when I first heard about Mensa, I imagined something like CFAR Minicamps. It did not occur to me that someone would spend their energy to create a worldwide organization for highly intelligent people, only to do... nothing. Because that is exactly what most Mensa members do, in my experience. They meet, they talk about something, but usually only to signal their own superiority, then they solve puzzles. Everyone wants to be a leader; almost no one is willing to be a team player. So all they do is confirm each other's superiority, and then lament about why the w...
Might work, depends on how inconspicuous and patient your were. Certainly not the first time people have been trying to recruit from/take over another organisation. Writing about it on the internet however will make what you're doing so much more obvious if someone started noticing.
There will be <=3 MLP-related posts on LessWrong in January 2013 (80%; marked right):
Since people are whining about the MLP-fics that LW is ruined, ruined, while I think it’s a temporary spurt exhausting a limited reservoir of such posts.
The MLP discussions were obviously going to die down, as indeed they have; 'Friendship is Optimal' is done, 'Myou've got to be kidding' has ceased to draw any attention and slowed updates, and Vaniver still hasn't done anything with his. The problem solved itself. People here can be such drama queens.
Link: NYT op-ed on publication bias in medicine.
I hadn't realized some of the measures in place to counter publication bias in medicine but am sad to see that these have had an insufficient effect. It's reassuring at least to see that significant players are both aware of the situation and interested in improvement.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.