Linkpost: Rat Traps by Sheon Han in Asterisk Mag

Reading this post reminds me of my standard online heuristic: just because someone is spending a lot of effort writing about you, does not mean that it is worth a minute of your time to read it.

(This is of course a subset of the general heuristic that most writing has nothing worth reading in it; but it bears keeping in mind that this doesn't change when the writing is about you.)

[-]Viliam2mo72

Yeah, I am not even sure what was the point of the article. What is the thing we are supposed to update about? Writing in a different style, or changing our opinions (about what exactly?), or finding completely new topics to talk about so that we are not boring the article author, or...?

[-]Chris_Leong2mo108

My take: Bits of this review come off as a bit too status-oriented to me. This is ironic, because the best part of the review is towards the end when it talks about the risk of rationality becoming a Fandom.

[-]gwern2mo285

Yes, basically. It is well-written and funny (of course), but a lot of it is wrong. What was, say, the last "article explaining Bayes" you saw on LW, which is a central example of his of the staleness and repetition killing LW? Would I find 3 or 4 new articles on how "Bayes's theorem is like a burrito" if I go over to the Main page right now...?* (Personally, I wouldn't mind reviving some more Bayes on LW these days, and I have an idea for one myself.)

And saying we weren't weird to begin with but have gotten weirder...? I have no idea how he could have gotten that idea - trust me when I say that people on LW used to be a lot weirder, or hey, no need to do that - just go crack open a copy of Great Mambo Chicken or ask a question like 'was a larger percentage of LW signed up for cryonics in 2009 or in 2024?' Sorry, everyone who joined post-MoR, but you're just a lot more normal and less weird than the OG LWers like Hanson or Clippy or Yudkowsky or even Roko. (Yes, you still have a shot at a normal life & happiness, but your posts are not remotely as unhinged, so who's to say who's better off in the end?)

* that was rhetorical, but I of course checked anyway and of the first 30 or 40 posts, the only one that even comes close to being about Bayesianism seems to be https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KSdqxrrEootGSpKKE/the-solomonoff-prior-is-malign-is-a-special-case-of-a which is not very much at all.

[-]FiftyTwo2mo73

Was rereading a bunch of early 2010s LW recently, prompted by getting a reply on one of my old comments, and its definitely weird. But the flavor of weird feels different somehow? A lot more earnest and direct, and with people more willing to make silly jokes and tangents.

There were also more top level posts along the lines of "Here's this new rationality technique I've been trying, what do people think?" It feels less, high context, I guess? A lot of current discussion is people immersed in some wider meta debate with long established sides and real world stakes to it.

I imagine that kind of posting wouldn't work particularly well these days given that the environment around it has changed.

[-]gwern8d356

Oh, the type of weirdness has definitely changed a lot. But I'm just contending that the level of deviancy is a lot lower these days.

You go to a LW meetup now and there's a lot of wealthy, well-scrubbed/dressed AI researchers (they even lift) and academics and executives and bright-eyed Stanford undergrads sniffing for an internship or YC application fodder. One famous wealthy guy is manic, because he's hypomanic & bipolar is overrepresented among entrepreneurs; don't worry, he'll be fine, until after the meetup when he disappears for a few months. Nobody can really talk about what they do, so you make small talk about what you can. (Have you heard that Trump might increase the SALT deduction? Big [RSU sale tax savings] if true!)

You go to a LW meetup c. 2010 and if you are sniffing anywhere, you'll notice a bit of a smell, perhaps from that one dude who looks like he just got out of a prison hunger strike and dresses like Asian Kurt Godel while the other sus dude looks like he just got out of prison period (and about 10:1 odds he did serve a stint). The manic-looking guy is manic because he has slept about 6 hours in the past week trying to make the Uberman polyphasic sleep schedule work; don't worry, he'll be fine after he crashes and sleeps for 16 hours next week. The crazy homeless-looking dude over in the corner really is homeless and a bit crazy, not some billionaire (and will jump in front of a train in a few years), while the guy on the other side of the room in a huddle is the actual cult leader everyone accuses Eliezer of being (and the guy next to him just might be Satoshi Nakamoto), and so on and so forth. (You bond over your shared experiences nearly being expelled from school by Zero Tolerance policies, possibly involving explosives, and ordering drugs off Silk Road 1.)

I'm not saying it's good or bad (arguably it's good, if AI timelines are short, there is negative value to screwing around with all the stuff we used to), but pound for pound, LWers were a lot weirder back then.

[-]Lucius Bushnaq8d50

Come to LessWrong Community Weekend in Europe, we still have 'weird' people around.

I don't know how we stack up to the pre-MoR crowd and I've never seen anyone who looked like they just got out of prison, but it's definitely not a bunch of people talking about normal politics or trying to make career connections.

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