http://psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychology/a/schedules.htm
You cannot impose a reward schedule on yourself...
The first 2 sentences address what you said. The rest is a massive tangent because staying on the same train of thought is hard for me. Also I was too lazy to go through the nesting to post that in a better spot.
If you say so, I barely come on here much. Today is the most active I've been in months.
Yes but it underlines what I was saying about "Morp." And it also addresses people who were asking why I singled out Alicorn.
Whenever someone tells me I'm only doing something for attention or that I only hate on certain things because I'm excluded then I say: "Thanks Captain Obvious." It throws them off a lot. People who are different are different not by choice but by force. Conventional social norms exert a massive pressure on every individual even ones with non-conforming parents/siblings/peers/teachers and the only reason why it doesn't work is because an equal or greater pressure is going the other way.
So many groups, including Less Wrong, are full of so much, conscious or subconscious, self signalling and it destroys their ability to understand their own motivations or those of similar people.
The original post is all uptight about content, but content doesn't matter. Socializing matters. No amount of actually thought provoking content is going to save LessWrong unless the community improves. But the communities own standards won't allow it to improve because you aren't properly regulating who is allowed to stay, among other issues, including the aforementioned issue of the community and not the content being the problem. Creating a surviving discussion website is not the same as creating a growing discussion website.
I won't get into the drama that will develop if I explain what I mean about regulating who can post since you wouldn't implement my suggestion anyways. But I think many people know what I mean even if they don't agree, and we'll leave it at that.
That's clearly not true. Alicorn again is a perfect of example of someone who clearly wanted to be socialized. I mean... dinner parties. Yes, I cannot get over the whole dinner party thing, get over it.
More on point though, centralization is the ultimate bug bear of the left/progressive/radicals/w.e. Look at the internecine wars of feminism or socialism or atheism. Furthermore everyone wants to address their local personal issues first and also divides who is allowed to interfere in problems among demographic or identity lines.
The success of a revolutionary movement, various religions being examples, requires both that it be more correct than what came before and that it be either equally or more satisfying. One should be careful though of copying the old systems too closely. Ethical Humanist solstice parties? Good lord what a terrible idea.
I scare quoted dinner parties because they are the most ridiculously conventional upper middle class thing of all time. Even more than Valium.
I rarely bother to comment on this site but this is important meta information. Many outsider groups and rationalists in particular seem to dissolve the moment their exclusion from standard social systems is removed. The most dumbed down example I have, and I specifically desire to post as low brow and example as possible, is the episode of Malcom In The Middle titled "Morp." Its prom backwards in case you missed that. The outsider group starts an anti-prom where they do everything ironically, and amusingly have all the same status bullshit problems over who is in charge or what should even be done as the normal kids prom. Then when some random dumb popular girls come down, feel upper class girl pity, and invite them to real prom everyone but Malcolm goes.
Less Wrong and its specific section of the rationalist community has approached this same singularity. It was all about getting enough like-minded and conveniently located people to form your own samesy, dull, cookie cutter clique just like normal people. Alicorn is a prime example of posts that expose this issue, although that whole cuddle pile bullshit is a more general example.
Much like say Atheism+, the OB/LW community has exploded into a million uncoordinated fragments merely seeking to satisfy their standard social needs. Meanwhile each of these shards has the same number of useless, weird, counterproductive group beliefs as mainstream Christians. And they've accomplished almost nothing except maybe funding the useless MIRI, if one even considers that an accomplishment. EA people even came and said MIRI doesn't qualify for GiveWell.
Indeed I feel my comparison to A+ is quite apt. So much bullshit spewed about improving stuff, raising the sanity waterline vs inclusive atheism but each group did essentially the opposite of their goal.
As per my title and associated duties I here mark the collapse of "internet rationalists" as a cohesive, viable, or at all productive group. Scott has a popular blog, Elie has a full time job wasting his life but gets paid good money, and Alicorn can now throw "interesting" "dinner parties." Also innumerable Tumblr related bullshit storms. Well, some movements accomplished less.
Adieu.
You know what he does for a living don't you?