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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   5385 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 22, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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So for an article to gain top-shelf status it seems it has to use so many inside terms--and preferably inside terms that in turn require inside terms to understand--that only people on the inside could get, not the "normies".

So a "normie" article would just not cut it, regardless of useful the insight, especially if the insight is accesible by anyone (the plebs). I guess elitist is the word.

Can this be simply the case that what you're encountering is the intersection between novelty and community preferences?

For example:

  • blog post that satisfies the community's preferences and offers novel insights = much liked.

  • blog post that satisfies the community's preferences but offers no novel insights = mostly ignored.

  • blog post that does not satsify the community's preferences but offers novel insights = sometimes ignored, some times disliked.

  • blog post that does not satisfy the community's preferences and does not offer novel insights = disliked.

Let's take your idea about Karl Popper's falsifiability principle:

  • if you post a description about it on LW, I would imagine it would mostly be ignored. It does not seem to satisfy LW preferences nor is it novel.

  • if you post a description about it on themotte, I would imagine it would be read, but would garner few replies/upvotes. It falls into themotte preferences, but is not novel.

  • if you post an interesting, novel take about it on LW, I would imagine it would mostly be ignored, although you have a chance to hook someone interested in this type of stuff.

  • if you post an interesting, novel take about it on themotte, I would imagine you might get many replies and many upvotes.

  • blog post that does not satisfy the community's preferences and does not offer novel insights = disliked.

There's a difference between not offering novel insight, and not offering novel insight according to the person downvoting.

That's my whole contention.

Let's take your idea about Karl Popper's falsifiability principle:

I said "if the principle hadn't already been laid out", that means it would be novel today. If it were novel today, plenty of people would think that it wasn't novel. People make the assumption that simple concepts cannot be novel, because somebody intelligent surely must have already thought about it. Right?

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