Misc thoughts on LW as a website

Epistemic status of this quick take -- tentative

Viliam's comment addresses a small part of what was once a relatively long post. Perhaps it's worth noting that the post Viliam focuses on was written after not before I reached certain conclusions. Note the transition from discussing AI and public health to discussing NFL and politics to hosting things remotely. Of course all of this is still quite experimental. Any way what was previously ill tempered, too long with too many tangents, I've whittled down to the key points.

1) Recency/frequency. LW does some things like Best of LW & perhaps sequences that go against this, but the basic website design emphasizes recency/frequency, and the most prominent users seem to act like columnists. The hyperbolic but useful mantra of {the media is the message} applies also to website design.

2) A story about how https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hHyYph9CcYfdnoC5j/auto-ratelimits got updated. I don't think this story is worth repeating except to note that LW had been enforcing rules it forgot to actually mention ie modest sloppiness & lack of professionalism on their part.

3) LW's auto rate limit rules -- a tradeoff between objectivity/simplicity & slow pernicious harm? The potential for preferences to self amplifying via auto rate limits should be noted. Also the auto rate limits for comments seem too strict.

4) Good things about LW -- mental engagement, information on certain topics, it's relatively fun

I would add to these the following

5) Based on Viliam's comment I detect an ingrained fear of LW being flooded with low effort low quality content. So some thing good -- shortness -- become some thing bad!?

(To be clear I don't particularly defend the quality of that short post compared to my other posts, but I generally attempt to make things short rather than long)

6) Effect of LW on visits (bot or human) to https://hzn33.neocities.org/ -- 43 -> 123 -> 51 (Link post to LW) -> 18. I intend to keep track of this for the next month or so.

Nothing in this quick take should be interpreted as an actual recommendation to Lightcone

Hzn

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