muflax comments on Designing Rationalist Projects - Less Wrong

30 Post author: calcsam 12 May 2011 03:38AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (78)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: [deleted] 12 May 2011 07:41:29PM 7 points [-]

(I'm not sure where to ask this, so I'll just put it here.)

Do you have any experience with doing this kind of thing online-only? I currently don't have any rational community around and I'm not even sure if I want one, but the benefits seem tremendous and I'm interested in at least trying.

Comment author: handoflixue 13 May 2011 01:33:06AM 1 point [-]

I'll second the interest in some form of online community / meet-up, and feel a bit silly for not thinking of the idea previously :)

Comment author: [deleted] 16 May 2011 10:45:30PM 1 point [-]

(Not specifically a reply to you, but it feels weird replying to myself. Just some brainstorming.)

Well, there's a Virtual Meetup, but that's video-based. I find that very intimidating, so I'd be interested in something less real-time.

I liked the idea of regular checkups (related talk), so maybe something mail-based like that might work. Incidentally, I recently bought a Zeo and it comes with some basic coaching. They regularly send you mail, helping you come up with some meaningful goals, asking you about your progress and so on. I really enjoyed that and it helped me track my sleep consistently so far.

I'll think about that more and maybe start something myself.

Comment author: handoflixue 18 May 2011 11:27:49PM 1 point [-]

Thinking out loud: If the issue is simply video, one could pretty easily run an IRC meetup. It has the advantage of still being somewhat "real time" and thus something you could block out an hour or two for a weekly "meetup."

If you want to avoid real-time entirely, then a forum or mailing list ought suffice. I'd point out that LessWrong is already effectively a forum, so I think you'd get a lot less out of this.

All of these, including the video conference, probably also run in to scaling issues unless you have a very good organizer and a crowd willing to go along with it. I'd expect small groups of 3-6, splintering as needed, would probably be best?

I suppose mostly it depends on what you're looking to get out of it, and why the main LessWrong site doesn't suffice.

Comment author: erratio 19 May 2011 06:33:58AM 0 points [-]

Well, there's a Virtual Meetup, but that's video-based

So far most of them have been voice-based. I'll also add that I'm the kind of person who's typically intimidated by the idea of discussing things in realtime (I feel like I don't generate points or counterpoints fast enough most of the time), but I've found the virtual meetups to be worthwhile and non-intimidating.

Comment author: [deleted] 19 May 2011 10:22:03PM 0 points [-]

Sounds good. I will re-consider joining the virtual meetup.