Matthew Barnett's Shortform

Matthew Barnett

This is a special post for quick takes by Matthew Barnett. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.

I agree with Wei Dai that we should use our real names for online forums, including Lesswrong. I want to briefly list some benefits of using my real name,

It means that people can easily recognize me across websites, for example from Facebook and Lesswrong simultaneously.
Over time my real name has been stable whereas my usernames have changed quite a bit over the years. For some very old accounts, such as those I created 10 years ago, this means that I can't remember my account name. Using my real name would have averted this situation.
It motivates me to put more effort into my posts, since I don't have any disinhibition from being anonymous.
It often looks more formal than a silly username, and that might make people take my posts more seriously than they otherwise would have.
Similar to what Wei Dai said, it makes it easier for people to recognize me in person, since they don't have to memorize a mapping from usernames to real names in their heads.

That said, there are some significant downsides, and I sympathize with people who don't want to use their real names.

It makes it much easier for people to dox you. There are some very bad ways that this can manifest.
If you say something stupid, your reputation is now directly on the line. Some people change accounts every few years, as they don't want to be associated with the stupid person they were a few years ago.
Sometimes disinhibition from being anonymous is a good way to spur creativity. I know that I was a lot less careful in my previous non-real-name accounts, and my writing style was different -- perhaps in a way that made my writing better.
Your real name might sound boring, whereas your online username can sound awesome.

It makes it much easier for people to dox you. There are some very bad ways that this can manifest.

I agree with this, so my original advice was aimed at people who already made the decision to make their pseudonym easily linkable to their real name (e.g., their real name is easily Googleable from their pseudonym). I'm lucky in that there are lots of ethnic Chinese people with my name so it's hard to dox me even knowing my real name, but my name isn't so common that there's more than one person with the same full name in the rationalist/EA space. (Even t

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6Viliam7y

These days my reason for not using full name is mostly this: I want to keep my professional and private lives separate. And I have to use my real name at job, therefore I don't use it online. What I probably should have done many years ago, is make up a new, plausibly-sounding full name (perhaps keep my first name and just make up a new surname?), and use it consistently online. Maybe it's still not too late; I just don't have any surname ideas that feel right.

4jp7y

Sometimes you need someone to give the naive view, but doing so hurts the reputation of the person stating it. For example suppose X is the naive view and Y is a more sophisticated view of the same subject. For sake of argument suppose X is correct and contradicts Y. Given 6 people, maybe 1 of them starts off believing Y. 2 people are uncertain, and 3 people think X. In the world where people have their usernames attached. The 3 people who believe X now have a coordination problem. They each face a local disincentive to state the case for X, although they definitely want _someone_ to say it. The equilibrium here is that no one makes the case for X and the two uncertain people get persuaded to view Y. However if someone is anonymous and doesn't care that much about their reputation, they may just go ahead and state the case for X, providing much better information to the undecided people. This makes me happy there are some smart people posting under pseudonyms. I claim it is a positive factor for the epistemics of LessWrong.

Matthew Barnett's Shortform

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Matthew Barnett's Shortform

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