Talk:Lesswrong:Homepage

Size change

Size reduction coming soon - consensus seems to be that it's currently too large.

Wording changes

Spurlock recommends (http://lesswrong.com/lw/7e5/the_cognitive_science_of_rationality/4tf9) incorporating the something like the following into the intro on the homepage: Long before the first Concorde supersonic jet was completed, the British and French governments developing it realized it would lose money. But they continued to develop the jet when they should have cut their losses, because they felt they had "invested too much to quit"1 (sunk cost fallacy2).

John tested positive for an extremely rare but fatal disease, using a test that is accurate 80% of the time. John didn't have health insurance, and the only available treatment — which his doctor recommended — was very expensive. John agreed to the treatment, his retirement fund was drained to nothing, and during the treatment it was discovered that John did not have the rare disease after all. Later, a statistician explained to John that because the disease is so rare, the chance that he had had the disease even given the positive test was less than one in a million. But neither John's brain nor his doctor's brain had computed this correctly (base rate neglect).

Mary gave money to a charity to save lives in the developing world. Unfortunately, she gave to a charity that saves lives at a cost of $100,000 per life instead of one that saves lives at 1/10th that cost, because the less efficient charity used a vivid picture of a starving child on its advertising, and our brains respond more to single, identifiable victims than to large numbers of victims (identifiability effect3 and scope insensitivity4).

-- Jsalvatier 03:08, 13 September 2011

+1 --Matt 19:00, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Drescher has a point about the disease example, it's somewhat ridiculous and almost certainly pure fiction, and as such shouldn't be included. --Vladimir Nesov 20:29, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Stylesheet breakage / Brain snafu

Sorry for these breakages. We think we've solved the root problem now. User:John_Maxwell_IV, thank you for repeatedly fixing this. --Matt 06:00, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Bgaesop's changes

Given the prominence of this page, I think it's a good idea to discuss major changes on its talk page (or in a Discussion/Open Thread post, like I did) before implementing them. Here's my feedback on the proposed changes: Removing the brain seems like a good idea. The Sequences are overrated in my opinion, and calling them "the world's premier resource on Epistemic Rationality, (how to have accurate beliefs), and Instrumental Rationality (how to use those beliefs to best make the world the way you want it to be)" is a strong claim. (Even if it were a true claim, sometimes it's best to understate how great things are and let people discover them for themselves--if something claims to be Really Great, that's not particularly strong evidence that it's Actually Great for most people, I don't think.) I agree that HPMoR should get more visibility, but I wouldn't want it to be more than a parenthetical note on the LW homepage.--John Maxwell IV (talk) 16:29, 2 May 2013 (MIST)

History

The recent history of the site is not well-documented. If someone were to post something along the lines of this advogato article, celebrating 10 years of that site, it might encourage those who have kept the...faith? persistence?