Talk:LessWrong/Archives/2024/August

Blanket revert by user Grayfell, asking for reasons

User @Grayfell reverted edit 1234013119 with a vague comment "WP:EDITORIALIZING, WP:TONE and WP:RS issues". Asking them to defend this on this talk page, as they said they would, and in desire to meet WP:BRD norm. Secarctangent (talk) 03:38, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

This is regarding this edit.

Unherd is a poor-quality outlet for both demonstrating significance and for factual claims. The included quote lacks context and was unattributed (the quote came Tom Chivers) and calling this a "cornerstone" is both uninformative and non-neutral. Find abetter source and use that source to explain why this is significant without cherry-picking.

For the line The community has grown substantially, and expanded beyond LessWrong; some commentators claim that... "Substantially" is too vague, and "some commentators claim" is both MOS:WEASEL and MOS:DOUBT.

As for the first paragraph of the 'Purpose' section, neither wording seems ideal, but whether or not rationality is actually increased is neither a settled issue, nor even a falsifiable claim, and Wikipedia isn't a platform for promotion. either way.

Grayfell (talk) 03:50, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, your most recent revert appears to put you in violation of WP:3RR? —Ashley Y 05:17, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Technically yes; I count four reverts from three distinct edits. WeyerStudentOfAgrippa (talk) 12:10, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

This revert was to fix a blatant WP:BLP violation. It doesn't count towards 3RR. XOR'easter (talk) 14:03, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. New contributors to this page would do well to carefully read WP policy pages, in this case WP:3RRBLP. Contrary to impressions that some may have, Wikipedia policies are subordinate to the overall purpose of the website (cf. WP:IGNORE). They have a spirit and intention behind them, and policy details are generally consistent with the spirit. Dedicated editors can't be held back from reverting policy violations when many occur in quick succession. Getnormality (talk) 22:33, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Let's take these one at a time.

1. Why is Unherd a poor-quality outlet ? There's a New Yorker source we can probably use instead, but I'd like to know more about your concerns about Unherd.

2. I think the current text is not NPOV; the sourced New Yorker article claims "the center of rationalist gravity followed him, in 2013, to Slate Star Codex" which is NOT the same as "In 2013, a significant portion of the rationalist community shifted focus to Scott Alexander's [[Slate Star Codex]". These are different metaphors with different meanings and we should not treat them the same. I'm happy to hear other options, but suggest we simply quote the underlying source instead.

3. Re: Purpose, I am trying to solve the problem that we don't have a RS saying that it "promotes lifestyle changes" as far as I can tell. I think people discuss them, but I don't see how we can justify "promotes". Is there a source I'm missing ? Secarctangent (talk) 00:34, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

@Grayfell is not replying; I would like to seek consensus that we do not have a RS to "promotes lifestyle changes." Does anyone disagree? Secarctangent (talk) 01:21, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Just shooting from the hip here, I would change the "Purpose" section to "Topics" and simply delete the first sentence. We are not in a position to summarize the purpose of LessWrong, unless perhaps it does so itself (but this would present primary source issues). Getnormality (talk) 01:46, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

The 'Purpose' paragraph cites two sources. Rhetorically speaking, what do those sources say about LessWrong's purpose? Likewise, what do other reliable (independent) sources say about its purpose? The proposed wording change for that paragraph did not make the paragraph any closer to cited sources. It did, however, make the article subtly more promotional-sounding. Keep in mind that we do not necessarily requires articles to share the exact same wording as sources. In fact, we explicitly do not want this, as it's a WP:CLOSEPARAPHRASE/WP:COPYVIO issue. Our goal as an encyclopedia is to summarize the underlying concept that is being conveyed by sources.

For the added paragraph and Unherd, if a more reliable source talks about something similar, look at what that source says and summarize it more neutrally and proportionately. A paragraph that calls it a "cornerstone" without explaining what that means or why it is important, followed by a relatively lengthy unattributed quote, is not neutral nor is it proportionate to the unreliable source being cited. Grayfell (talk) 07:40, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

New reference to Chivers book

I noticed a nice new reference has been added by User:XOR'easter:

Chivers, Tom (2019). "37. The Neoreactionaries". The Rationalist's Guide to the Galaxy. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-1-4746-0880-0. Another accusation is that the Rationalists are linked to the alt-right. And there is a very good and specific reason to think that they might have those links. That is that they do. The online group known as the 'Neoreactionaries', which is a sort of strange medievalist subset of the alt-right, grew out of the Rationalist movement to some extent. The even left LessWrong and founded their own website, named (spot the reference) 'More Right'. Mencius Moldbug [blogged] on Robin Hanson's Overcoming Bias before LessWrong split from it. Michael Anissimov, another prominent Neoreactionary, was until 2013 MIRI's media director.

That Moldbug blogged on Overcoming Bias was not previously known to me, and the source seems solid. Great job! However, I don't think this should be used to support "the website and the community surrounding it played a role in the development of the neoreactionary movement." The relevant fact from this source is about Overcoming Bias, not LessWrong. The part about Anissimov would support "a prominent neoreactionary was MIRI's media director, an organization founded creator of LW", not "LW played a role in the development of NRx". I think the following, slightly revised mockup would accurately represent the sources we have:

"Overcoming Bias hosted posts from Mencius Moldbug, the founder of the neoreactionary movement.[Chivers] After LessWrong split from Overcoming Bias, it too attracted the participation of neoreactionaries with discussions on the site of eugenics and evolutionary psychology.[Fusion]"

It feels less than ideal that a fact about Overcoming Bias is being highlighted in the LessWrong page, but this seems appropriately contextualized in the section overall, and the fact is that the LW page is currently the only place on Wikipedia where this story comes together. We shouldn't make the perfect the enemy of the good: accurately informing people about this community with facts from reliable sources.

Final, minor point: per our previous discussion, I maintain that FAZ is not WP:RS for any version of this claim, and should be removed. While FAZ is prima facie appealing as a news organization, IMHO the Chivers reference is superior per WP:CONTEXTMATTERS because it contains (1) a verifiable fact (2) supporting the (proposed revised) Wiki text (3) authored by an established journalist.

XOR'easter, I hope my respect for your legwork is evident. I'm hoping this proposal allows us to leave the murky FAZ discussion behind and finish with an accurate, informative page. Getnormality (talk) 22:25, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure we can trust this source. Searching the website, I'm not seeing any examples of Moldbug blogging on Overcoming Bias; at best, I see examples of Hanson writing up his sides of debates with Moldbug, but under Hanson's byline. Secarctangent (talk) 00:38, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. In English, a blogger is generally the main author of a blog post, not a commenter. Here is what I'm seeing online:

1. A Google search for site:overcomingbias.com moldbug turns up 32 results on Google. I quickly checked through all of them. No posts have a Moldbug byline. The posts are either Hanson-authored replies in a debate with Moldbug or they are references to Moldbug by commenters (typically on LW, which some OB links forward to).
2. In his debate with Moldbug, Hanson's tone is contemptuous, describing a response as "confused and rambling" [1] and exclaiming, with evident exasperation, "what more can one say to such a person?" [2].
3. Sandifer's book Neoreaction: a Basilisk says "one of the sites where [Moldbug] got his start as a commenter was on Overcoming Bias" (emphasis mine). Hanson is mentioned six times in my 2018 edition of the book. After checking all six, I see no instance where Moldbug is reported to have blogged on Overcoming Bias. This would have been an extremely notable moment given the topic of the book.
4. I cannot determine with certainty whether Moldbug authored posts on OB that were deleted later. However, this would have been notable at the time, and my search for overcomingbias moldbug posts "deleted" turned up no evidence of this.

The weight of evidence strongly suggests (if not beyond all doubt) that Chivers got "blogged" wrong, or was misquoted. Meanwhile, Sandifer's account is almost certainly correct, and could be verified beyond all doubt using the Wayback Machine.

Given how it is promoted, Chivers seems to be a book of feature journalism. This is a form of "soft news" that is likely to be less rigorously fact-checked, even if written by an established journalist. The book title's play on words and the book's reviews ("Beautifully written, and with wonderful humour") also suggest a relatively less serious book. Sandifer's book also has some of these qualities, but Sandifer's factual claim about Moldbug commenting is verifiable and almost certainly true, given the debate.

Per WP:EDITING, "a lack of content is better than misleading or false content". WP:NOTOR says "the best solution is to remove minor incorrect claims". While both Chivers's and Sandifer's books lack bulletproof WP:RS status, both present a verifiable fact, and Sandifer's has the advantage of being almost certainly true, while Chivers's is unlikely to be true. My conclusion: either Moldbug should be described as a commenter on Overcoming Bias, with Sandifer as the source, or the claim should be removed entirely. In my perfect world we would do the former. But as a newer editor, I am unsure if this is appropriate given reasonable WP:RS concerns about the book, and the fact that I have done some WP:OR to reach these conclusions.

Finally, I notice that the word "blogged" is in brackets in the Chivers reference. XOR'easter, I am unable to easily get this book, could you provide the original word used? Getnormality (talk) 02:57, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

I went ahead and made the edits proposed in my various recent talk comments. My previous comments provide WP:RS due diligence commensurate with the sensitivity of the topic, and it is long overdue to present the connection between neoreaction and LessWrong in terms of specific, verifiable facts, rather than vague narrative claims from soft news sources that fall short of WP:RS standards. Admittedly I myself have used soft news sources, but only for verifiable claims, and only after carefully fact-checking those claims myself. My interpretation of WP:OR is that we should not present original research within the article text, but we may use fact-checking work to select those secondary sources that best comply with WP:CONTEXTMATTERS and WP:CONTEXTFACTS. I believe that this interpretation is the most balanced, effective way to serve Wikipedia's dual objectives of presenting (1) accurate information (2) from reliable secondary sources. Getnormality (talk) 14:17, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

" My conclusion: either Moldbug should be described as a commenter on Overcoming Bias, with Sandifer as the source, or the claim should be removed entirely. In my perfect world we would do the former. "

I think it should be removed; he wrote exactly one comment, that didn't get significant engagement, in November 2007 when a) LessWrong didn't exist yet and b) his blog had started (first post in May 2007), so he was basically a nobody; see the history of Unqualified Reservations - in archived versions of his blogroll either before or after I see no reference of Overcoming Bias in his Blogroll, so I don't think he considered it part of his "circle", there was just one drive-by comment. Flammifer (talk) 09:27, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for looking into this. If your report is accurate, I entirely agree that this is warranted. I don't consider Sandifer an unimpeachable RS, and source research disconfirming or heavily qualifying her claims is a warrant for exercise of WP:EDITDISC. Getnormality (talk) 11:05, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Recent review of History/Neoreaction section against WP guidelines

I think it is time to review recent findings on how this page has represented the relationship between LessWrong (LW) and the neoreactionary movement (NRx). Here is what we have seen so far, from my perspective:

1. The now-removed claim that LW played a role in the development of NRx was vague and lacking WP:RS support. I believe that my comments elsewhere on this page establish this beyond reasonable doubt. Notably, versions prior to 2019 did not include this claim, and only had the well-supported claim that NRx-ers "took an interest" in LW. Unfortunately, a revision was made that damaged the article's WP:RS compliance.
2. The character of WP:RS noncompliance here was a failure to diligently evaluate source claims in context, such that news features with strong evidence of being analysis/opinion in nature were presented as if they provided facts vetted by a fact-checked reporting source. In particular, while opinionated sources can sometimes provide vetted facts, there was a failure to notice whether claims were of a sufficiently concrete character that they could have reasonably been vetted by fact-checkers in a standard news reporting process.
3. This claim -- and even more unfounded ones, such as NRx first grew on LW -- have existed on the page since 2019, and in the past 5 years may have materially misled the public, as well as reliable sources themselves, through Wikipedian citogenesis. It is abundantly clear from e.g. Greyfell's citations and comments on this talk page that
   1. NRx is a widely despised movement.
   2. The connection between LW and NRx has been a topic of significant interest in the mass media and some scholarly communities.
4. More recently, the noncompliant claim was supported by a tonally opinionated book which claimed that the founder of NRx "[blogged]" on LW. My research indicates that this claim is unlikely to be true. It is much more likely that he was just a commenter. We have a responsibility to fact-check where practical as part of exercising editorial discretion in the information we publish. That responsibility becomes much greater when the information is derogatory about a living person -- in this case, the claim that Robin Hanson allowed the leader of a widely-despised movement to blog on his website.

WP pages with reliability shortcomings are likely not uncommon due to the challenging, almost journalistic work needed to fully comply with the policy. However, it should have been recognized that characterizing a community as "playing a role" in the development of a widely despised group, without diligently researched WP:RS support, is a serious WP:NPOV violation. It is also uncomfortably close to a violation of WP:BLPSTYLE, which states "do not label people with contentious labels, loaded language, or terms that lack precision, unless a person is commonly described that way in reliable sources." (emphasis mine) Anyone would reasonably object to Wikipedia pages on their projects containing vague, WP:RS-unsupported claims that suggest they have somehow made the world a worse place.

All that said, this section is now strictly factual and WP:RS-supported to the best of my abilities. It is also no longer materially derogatory, as

1. It is generally understood that blog commenters can be all sorts of widely-despised people without necessarily reflecting on the blog.
2. The text is followed immediately by the clarification that LW's founder opposes NRx.

There remains an issue of whether this material belongs here? I maintain that it does. The documented interest in the topic establishes notability above and beyond what WP:N requires, and it is best to tell the story in full context, which requires going back to OB (as is already done in the opening of the History section, whose text I have not seen disputed).

Having considered all this, it is my opinion that the current text should remain, and remain in its current form, to inform the public and to avoid further violations of WP:RS, WP:NPOV, and WP:BLP with damaging implications to public and media understanding. The only exception to this should be if proposed changes adhere to an WP:RS review standard at least as diligent as that which produced the current text.

I have spent a lot of time developing this opinion, and I expect that disagreement with my evidence and arguments will henceforth be accompanied by meaningful engagement. There must be no more disengaged dismissal or unilateral reversion without discussion on this sensitive topic.

Lastly, I want to emphasize that I believe everyone's involvement has been in good faith, and I have appreciated working with all of you on this article. I have done my best to draw a bright line between what I see as serious WP policy adherence shortcomings with real-world consequences, and negativity towards any contributors who may have been involved. Getnormality (talk) 16:03, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

(again reiterating that I am the primary admin of LW, so I have a huge COI here)

Thanks a lot for you and other Wikipedian's work on this. I am glad to see the article improved and made more accurate.

I think two issues with the current article remain:

1. The neoreaction section is a disproportionate fraction of the article. I think it might make sense to include this section, since it has gotten media coverage from recognized reliable sources, but I don't think it makes sense for it to be roughly 1/7th of the article. LessWrong has hundreds of thousands of articles on it, with tens of thousands of authors, which have been extensively covered in books and media articles, basically none of which have anything to do with neoreaction. I think the article would be substantially improved by expanding the other sections using reliable sources (I have linked to a good number of them above 5 years ago, and many more have been written since then).
2. I do think the current article gives people a very skewed impression of how prevalent neoreactionary thought is on LessWrong today. I don't think I've moderated a single conversation on the site about neoreaction or adjacent ideas in the whole period in which I've been administrator (since 2017). These topics have nothing to do with the site as it is. I do think politics discussion of this type was more prevalent before I became admin. It would, in my opinion, be quite valuable to add something like "while discussion of neoreactionary ideas was never a large fraction of content written on LessWrong, all remaining activity by neoreactionaries faded out after the transition to LessWrong 2.0, and in recent years no prominent neoreactionaries have been active on the site, as artificial intelligence became the dominant topic of interest of the site", maybe citing some of the content surveys we have done about what kind of content gets written on the site, or maybe just this search result page: https://www.lesswrong.com/search?contentType=Comments&query=neoreaction&page=1

Again, I have a huge conflict of interest here, so please feel free to ignore any of my comments, and I will refrain from making any substantial edits to this page. I do of course have a lot of detailed knowledge about the site and its history and would like this article to be more accurate, and would love to help anyone who wants to do that. Habryka (talk) 19:28, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Habryka, thanks so much for dropping by. I think your points are very reasonable, and there is a major discussion that needs to be had here -- one that I alone cannot determine the outcome of. I was able to identify and fix clear policy violations and make this article less misrepresentative of LessWrong, but the more subjective question of overall content balance per WP:UNDUE is still in need of a diligent discussion in utmost good faith.

By the way, I have begun publishing essays which I hope will spark a renewal of our commitment to such discussions, not only here, but across all of Wikipedia. This is not something I will be able to do on my own. The success of the endeavor will depend upon the extent to which it inspires others, much like Eliezer's greatest works -- several of which I admire, despite not being a participant in the community. Getnormality (talk) 19:43, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't publish original research. Likewise, Wikipedia is not a platform for public relations. Since it's clear that both of you are at least fans of Yudkowsy and by extension the LessWrong website. I would suggest focusing more on brief, actionable suggestions, and as a show of respect for other volunteers, please, please be more succinct. To be blunt, first-hand observations about about neoreaction or adjacent ideas is not even close to a reliable source. I indicated above, I have visited the site recently to perform a sanity check, and during that visit easily found some "adjacent ideas" to borrow the euphemism, so the involvement of one moderator is irrelevant. Yes, my observations are WP:OR, but so are the first-hand observations of an admittedly biased moderator.

As an aside, Getnormality, from your contributions I can see that you are a new and inexperienced editor. As I hope you are already aware, the things you have written about have already been discussed many, many times before over the past two two decades, by hundreds of thousands of active participants across millions of discussions. So if the only people who participate in these new essays are coming from these talk pages, there is a real risk of these essays becoming a walled garden. WP:LOCALCONSENSUS is a related problem. An essay that doesn't reflect the wider community is not very useful. Grayfell (talk) 22:56, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi again Grayfell. While I sympathize with Habryka, I want to emphasize that I am satisfied with the article text as it stands. By my lights, it is compliant with Wikipedia's standards and furthers Wikipedia's objectives. I regret my inexperience and verbosity and look forward to improving. I appreciate your patience and moderation, and I hope for an ever more productive collaboration with you and the other editors. Getnormality (talk) 23:58, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Hey @Getnormality there is nothing that you should be apologizing for. @Grayfell refuses to reply to talk page messages and doesn't collaborate with other editors, as is obvious from looking directly above on this very page. You're doing great. Secarctangent (talk) 01:21, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Here is a fascinating detail of the English language. "Regret" is not quite the same as "apologize" ;) Getnormality (talk) 01:38, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I wasn't asking for an apology, I did not read that response as an apology, nor was I asking for contrition of any kind. I was just trying to provide some outside perspective on this project and Wikipedia's lengthy history of exactly these kinds of discussions.

As for Me "refusing" to reply... gee, with an attitude like that, I don't think it's any great mystery why I might not be enthusiastic about responding. WP:AGF is policy. Grayfell (talk) 07:48, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Over the years, I have found assuming good faith to be spiritually demanding. But it has brought me, and the teams I have worked on, far, far too many rewards to stop investing in.

From my vantage point, it is clear that strong political perspectives of all kinds exist all over Wikipedia. These occasionally become involved in lapses in our mission execution, and sometimes direct engagement of this fact cannot be avoided. Hopefully with experience I will get better both at avoiding these myself and mitigating them gracefully when I see them in others. It is a challenge of great interest to me. Getnormality (talk) 10:37, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

To signal-boost what another editor wrote above: "It's pretty clear that LessWrong is mainly about rationality and artificial intelligence, and that the content on neoreaction was WP:UNDUE and damaged the website's reputation for years." The connection between LW and Neoreaction is a tiny part of the blog's profile and (in spite of edits which have improved the section) a significant part of its Wikipedia page. From a common-sense perspective, that isn't appropriate. Llajwa (talk) 18:20, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi there, brief perspective from my side. I sympathize with concerns on both sides, but I have yet to figure out if there's a productive way to have this discussion. Based on @Grayfell's message above, there seems to be a belief that the due emphasis issue has already been figured out by wider community consensus. I have no specific evidence on which to evaluate this assertion. This may be because of my inexperience. Therefore, my inclination is to not participate in this discussion further until I understand better what is going on. Getnormality (talk) 18:56, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

To summarize what I said above: Wikipedia uses independent sources to determine how significant any aspect is. This isn't based on first-hand observations. Wikipedia's goal isn't to damage LessWrong's reputation, but neither is the goal to bolster LessWrong's reputation, because this isn't a platform for public relations. Grayfell (talk) 19:07, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I understand that aspect of the policy and I am not aware of any point where I have said anything contrary, either in these talk pages or in my essays. If you dispute this, I would be grateful to be notified of the specific points of disagreement, with citation of the specific words I said that made you think I believed something.

When I said there needs to be a discussion, I did not intend to imply that the outcome of that discussion should be anything in particular. If the outcome of the discussion is "Wikipedia policy is great and we need to refresh our memories of it", that's great. But it seems that there are differing opinions within this talk page on how to address due emphasis, and it would be beneficial for us to align by discussing the issues and the policies we have to address them. Getnormality (talk) 21:47, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

You pinged me about my comments, so I summarized that position for the benefit of the person "signal boosting".

I linked above to WP:LOCALCONSENSUS because that seems relevant to this discussion, but obviously, there are a large number of overlapping guidelines and policies that apply here. One essay that I'm particularly fond of lately is Wikipedia:Writing Wikipedia articles backward. While that doesn't directly apply since this isn't a brand-new article, it does help explain a deeper problem here. If nothing else, approaching the article based on first-hand knowledge tends to make crappy articles. Our goal with most articles is to explain topics to people who don't already have first-hand knowledge of them. People looking in from the outside will have direct experience trying to explain this topic to other people looking in from the outside. We can and should take advantage of that perspective, when it is available, to help us explain the topic. Grayfell (talk) 07:46, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

I love that backward essay. Just amazing. It speaks to how a certain bias can creep in in a very specific, actionable way. I'm a fan. Getnormality (talk) 10:30, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

@Llajwa Are the people talking about WP:UNDUE weight even reading it?

Proportional weight is based on what the reliable sources are saying. The prose proportions in this case are incidental; it takes a few sentences to describe what the sources say about the neoreaction connection. Is there any missing well-sourced content about LW? WeyerStudentOfAgrippa (talk) 09:56, 27 July 2024 (UTC)