alexflint comments on Designing Rationalist Projects - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: alexflint 15 May 2011 12:44:27PM 4 points [-]

You seem to be arguing that using a community gathering to motivate people is inherently bad because in the past it has been used by wicked people for wicked deeds. This is a very dangerous stance to take as it can potentially prohibit any technique that has even been used for evil deeds. Some of the early scientology meetings were held on boats - does that mean we should never ever allow ourselves to hold a LW meetup in a boat?

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 16 May 2011 04:11:55AM 1 point [-]

Maybe it seems that way, but I'm not.

I'm saying that if the expectation is close enough toward "everybody affirms the effectiveness of the technique they were told to practice last week" as opposed to "a few people who are most excited can share what worked/didn't about it", you'll distort people's thinking.