Yep, definitely! The reason why these are big tomes is IMO largely downstream of the distribution methods at the time.

Like, yes, totally, sometimes you have to cross large inferential distances. For example, the sequences are probably one of the most inferential-distance spanning artifacts that I have read in my life. Nevertheless, they were written one blogpost a day over the course of two years. 

Many pieces of intellectual progress were also first made in the form of a lecture series, where each lecture was prepared after the previous one was finished. Then that lecture series was eventually written up into a book. Indeed, I think that is for most forms of intellectual progress, a better way of developing both ideas and pedagogical content knowledge.

Yeah, I agree. Thinking more about this, you can think about it a bit as a mechanism for splitting the surplus of spreading accurate information fairly. Like, you are creating positive externalities by telling people that this person you respect is someone they should work with, which they get to capture. The person you respect thinks the same about you, but they are not putting in the effort to share that with others. This seems a bit unfair! It seems reasonable to be like "hey mate, I am investing in the commons in this way, and you are not, can we please both do our part?". 

It still seems a bit dicey, but like, in-principle this seems good and like it improves the world. 

I think I should just be able to appoint the two as members without resigning as member? Like, members can vote to modify the bylaws, so at the very least I should just be able to appoint a new member by rewriting the bylaw. 

I will look into this sometime this week or next week. Feel free to poke me for an update any time if I end up not putting one here.

I agree that if you have two people who mutually already respect each other then such an alliance would be a null-operation, but like, why then make such alliances in the first place? Can it really be said that the alliance is therefore fine to make? Doesn't such an alliance bind you to not say something if your opinion changes? 

Agree! I found that section quite interesting to read and ran into it when researching for this post. 

I think I disagree with Paul Graham's lax-seeming relationship to telling selective truths and leveraging that for your company's success. Separately, I do also think Viaweb running a non-trivial fraction of the store fronts on the internet made it ambiguously a young company. I would be curious to learn how close this was to Yahoo's acquisition of Viaweb, which could sway me either way on this being a counterexample or not. 

Separately, I am pretty sure Paul Graham has said things other places where he warns startups not to hire PR companies, or something to that affect, but I can't find it. This HN comment refers to it. 

Oh, huh, maybe you are right? If so, I myself was unaware of this! I will double check our bylaws and elections that have happened so far and confirm the current state of things. I was definitely acting under the assumption that I wasn't able to fire Vaniver and Daniel and that they would be able to fire me! 

See for example this guidance document I sent to Daniel and Vaniver when I asked them to be board members: 

If it is indeed true that they cannot fire me, then I should really rectify that! If so, I am genuinely very grateful for you noticing. 

I think given clear statements that I have made that I am appointing them to a position in which they are able to fire me, I think they would have probably indeed held the formal power to do so, but it is possible that we didn't follow the right corporate formalities, and if so should fix that! Corporate formalities do often turn out to really matter in the end.

Any of those seem fine. Public is better, since more people get to benefit from it.

This is (approximately) my forum.

Also, just to contextualize this, this is in the context of a thread about forum moderation. I have various complicated takes about the degree to which LW belongs to Lightcone Infrastructure, and what our relationships to various stakeholders is, and I don't relate to LessWrong as a thing I (approximately) own in most respects.

If you are uncertain about what I would feel comfortable doing, and what I wouldn't, feel free to ask me!

No, you are misreading the bylaws. The bylaws explicitly state: 

(1) the directors of this corporation shall serve as the Members of this corporation, (2) election to the Board shall constitute election to the membership of this corporation; and (3) the membership status of any director shall terminate immediately and without further corporate action upon such person's ceasing to be a director for any reason,

I don't really understand why corporate bylaws are structured this way, but at the present moment in time, Lightcone Infrastructure has 3 members, which together can vote on removing members and appointing members (and every director is automatically a member, and loses their membership status the moment they stop being a director).

what's known as a sole-member nonprofit, with a 1-3 person board of directors determined by a single person (member), namely Oliver Habryka.

This is true, but to be clear, we do have a 3 person board! It's me, Vaniver and Daniel Kokotajlo! I appointed Vaniver and Daniel, but we do now have a pretty bog-standard 3 person board, so things are not solely controlled by me.