# Some reflections on the LW community after several months of active engagement

There seems to be some folks who might derive useful insights from a third-party, and mostly neutral, perspective of how the community appears after an honest and sustained effort of engagement, someone who doesn't really place AI risk as their top priority but who also doesn't completely ignore it like some critics, or opponents, of LW might. 

Notably I've encountered some folks who had strong personal opinions one way or another but refrained from writing them in a public, or even pseudo-anonymous, manner. 

There also appears to be a large group of lurkers or once-in-a-blue-moon posters who nonetheless have some views of the community and might benefit from someone willing to take the risk to do a write-up.

First off, addressing the popular critiques and praises:

There has definitely been some evaporative cooling of the community in the past decade or so. Some of the most insightful members have gone on to do bigger things, and the average quality of new posts is somewhat less than where it was a decade ago. Or so far as I can tell via the archives. This isn't very surprising as this is the common trajectory of every community that rapidly grows in size.

It would have taken a super-human effort to retain the same level of quality going from 100 to 1000 users, let alone from 1000 to 10000, and so on. So I don't think that would have been a fair expectation to place on the moderators, or anyone else involved, of a decade ago.

On the flip side, there is a larger cross-section of society represented in the 2022 userbase, And there has been a correspondent softening of the hard edges that may have been off putting to some a decade ago.

Relatedly, the proportion of really bizarre or challenging writing has gone down, for better and for worse. For example, there definitely does appear to be some unique benefit from a community with lots of oddballs with jarring writing styles, but the downside is obvious because nobody really desires to have their norms be constantly challenged in every paragraph.

There has been growing focus, and emphasis, on advancements in AI risk and alignment, so LW does seem to be less of a catch-all forum than before. This is clearly better for those who wish to focus and really get into the details. But I can sympathize with the critique that there's less charm compared to a group of unconstrained folks exploring in a hundred different directions.

Some of the common terminology is indeed puzzlingly unique, and thus promotes a distinctive writing style that does, in extreme cases, seem to be satire compared to the academic norm. I found it personally difficult to adjust to, and as you can tell by my somewhat varying writing style, I haven't found the best way to write in a conversational yet concise manner while incorporating the terminology.

There is some charm, and exciting challenge, in trying to craft writing that isn't dry and aloof yet still remains accurate enough to describe highly complex and technical ideas. So many of the critics seem to be missing the forest for the trees.

And I can see very little direct harm in being an outlier in writing style, and quite a lot of benefit from having such a unique differentiator.

Certainly some the best Fanfiction I've ever read came from community members, and I highly doubt they would be nearly as popular if standard academic jargon were used.

That being said, the critics do have a reasonable argument when it comes to comparisons with other notable online forums. LW does seem slightly more insular in some respects than SSC, Overcoming Bias, HN, etc., though that is understandable given the unique origins of the community and the developments that have taken place since.

Also, I do agree that there is a slight 'creepiness vibe' with the way the Sequences are presented by default on the home page, as well as the way they are written. Of course the necessities of trying to present very abstract concepts in an educational manner to a target demographic that is less experienced and outside of the 99.9th percentile that typically interact with such ideas in elite graduate programs and comparable institutions, really do constrain the possible range of writing styles.

For example, references to popular culture and mass media that would seem too immature for a serious academic journal are almost to be expected in casual online essays. Likewise with the more emotive and conversational writing style. Along with the very understandable desire to not alienate potential peripheral demographics, I can't see a much better way of writing the Sequences even with a decade of hindsight, without drastically narrowing the potential audience.

There is also commonly made criticism of 'hero worship' in regards to Eliezer which I've found to exist but it's somewhat overstated. On average he does seem to receive more deferential treatment than other long standing community members, and it does appear to be more than a strict linear increase, as his real accomplishments do seem to be on paper somewhat less than Robin Hanson for example. 

I've not met either personally so I will refrain from judging on their personal qualities. 

But I can also empathize with many of the newer, and younger, members who likely have never had 1 on 1 interactions with someone relatively well known, in person or online, and who understandably lack the context to place themselves. 

I have been quite fortunate to have met those who were truly far superior in some capacity than myself, and who seem to be several levels above anyone on LW, so I know it's not realistic to expect everyone to have had the same opportunity.

The information environment is also more adversarial nowadays than what it was before, so the apparent deficiencies of LW need to be adjusted to the new environmental baseline to allow for a fair comparison. None of the critics, or opponents, seems to have done this, though this is almost never done for any type of criticism. Perhaps that says more about criticism, and critics themselves, than what they critique. 

So it may very well be that, relative to its environment, 2022 LW is actually superior to that of 2012 LW. Especially as the moderators have done a good job with maintaining the publicly accessible focus.

Overall, my experience has been positive, there are still interesting writings, the work being done clearly has some non-zero value, and the community norms are certainly far better than most of the internet. 

In practical terms I've found the average quality of writings on LW to match the best subreddits but worse than the best private forums. 

(For reference I keep a tally of essays and although none of the writings here make it into my top 10 list of the most persuasive essays I've ever read, there is a startlingly high proportion in my top 1000.)

Whether or not average quality can be maintained will likely be a function of growth rate, overall size, and moderator involvement. It's here that it would be customary to offer some advice on what to do for the future but there already are many competent folks who have some interest in maintaining community quality, and who have enough experience to understand the common pitfalls of online interaction.

In the end I do hope the community will keep on going, in some form, into the distant future.