If we want Less Wrong to achieve its goals of increasing the sanity waterline or attract minds to AI, we will need more publicity.
But at the same time, we don't want to lessen the average quality of posts. Putting Less Wrong in a standard newspaper would definitely do that. If we were to do publicity, we should probably do so in a place where there is already some self-selection for intelligence/rationality. Wired would probably a good magazine for this.
Wired would probably a good magazine for this.
I'm not sure, I get the impression the people reading wired are people who like to think of themselves as rational, but aren't necessarily.
Recently reporters from two major national magazines contacted me in preparation for doing stories on Bitcoin. This reminded me that Wired magazine did a cover story on the Cypherpunks in its second issue. I think the LessWrong community is already larger and more active than Cypherpunks were back then, and potentially more influential, but there hasn't been much publicity on us. I'm tempted to suggest doing a story on LessWrong to one of the reporters. Is this a good idea, or bad?
More generally, do we want more publicity, and if so what's the best way to go about getting it?
ETA: Would it be bad etiquette to reveal the names of these magazines at this point, or even to say as much as I've said?