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Hyena comments on Don't call yourself a rationalist. - Less Wrong
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I always call you all "LessWrongians" or "the people at LessWrong" sometimes also using the word "dudes".
A somehow arbitrary name is good, because it allows better compartmentalization.
Just like "Mensa" is better than "people more intelligent than you", or "Toastmasters" is better than "people who can speak better than you", also "LessWrongians" is better than "people who are more rational than you".
Of course we usually don't say "people who are more rational than you"; we say "rationalists" instead... but saying it differently does not prevent the audience from decoding the (real or percieved) original meaning.
Being a member of a group with arbitrary name is a hobby. Being a member of a group with some property X in the name suggests that your environment is somehow non-X or not-enough-X, otherwise you would not need such group.
Mensa has negative connotations in the minds of some people. I considered joining Mensa but decided against it when all of my friends said that people in Mensa are all arrogant, self-impressed jerks. Note that as far as I know, none of my friends know anyone in Mensa, they just have a pre-conceived idea of what Mensans are like.
People who join Mensa usually do it for signalling. People who criticize Mensa usually do it for signalling. Both groups enjoy the idea of being better than the other group. You could join Mensa and criticize it, for double signalling. I did. :D
I have met a few interesting people there, but the organization is mostly disappointing. It does not have a goal. Well, officially it does: the goal is to study intelligence and provide a stimulating environment for its members. But most members just meet and talk about whatever and also how intelligent they are and how the world does not reward their intelligence. I am afraid than any pseudoscience or conspiracy theory would be more welcome than rationality.
But if Mensa in your country is large enough, perhaps you could use it as a filter, find rational people inside Mensa, and start a local Bayesian conspiracy. Mensa can preselect intelligent people who search for something new. If Mensa will disappoint you, it will probably disappoint many new members too -- these people are already preselected for intelligence and searching for something new, just collect their contacts soon and send them to LW.
Personally, I was somewhat insulted when my mother suggested to me that I should join Mensa; I couldn't see any way that being a member could be beneficial for me status-wise.
Also, really? No benefit? It's a very obvious mark of intelligence, so anyone who is impressed by that and doesn't have any negative connotations associated with the organization is going to see being a member as high-status.
Yes, but it's not like I have difficulty signalling high intelligence without Mensa membership, without having to bring in the frequently negative connotations of being one.
See Why Real Men Wear Pink.
Their claimed benefit is the opportunity to hang out with people of a similar intelligence.
This is a bit of a Red Queen's Race: as the "arbitrary" proper noun becomes associated with property X, people start to respond to it as a generic referent to property X. If I want to avoid those responses by this strategy, I end up having to discard one term after another after another, always looking for a term that people don't have a referent for. It's kind of the opposite of clear communication, and gets tedious after a couple of decades.
It's also possible to turn this around. I was a member of an aphasics support group for a while (while recovering from brain damage) and in general this got framed, not as "my environment is insufficiently supportive of aphasics" but "I need more support for dealing with my aphasia than my environment provides." The difference is at best subtle, but it's frequently the difference between people feeling accused of inadequacy and not.
For what it's worth: I've been to a few Mensa gatherings (a coworker of mine was an active member and invited me regularly) and tend to think of Mensa, not as "people more intelligent...", but people who care more about being intelligent. I was a Toastmasters member for several years, I tend to think of Toastmasters as people who care more about speaking well. I've been intermittently active here for a while, and tend to think of the folks here as people who care more about rationality (and in some cases about behaving rationally). If that perception were more ubiquitous it might help... being implicitly accused of not caring enough about positive trait X is less of a challenge than being implicitly accused of lacking X.
This depends on how widely the name is known. "Mensa" is known enough, so many people have associations with it. When a random person on a street will know who "LessWrongians" are, then... well, hopefully at that time the waterline of sanity will be higher than today. But until then, "LessWrongians" means nothing to most people; and if necessary, you can always reframe it as a group of Yudkowsky's fanfic fans.
It's easy to start seeing "LessWrong" as an arbitrary label if you're used to the name, but it totally does have a confrontational meaning in the way that "Mensa" and "Toastmasters" don't and in the way that "more rational than you" does.
I think we should call people at Less Wrong the Illuminati. There's no way that could have any negative connotations, right?
I tend to think of y'all as the Lessiath (no relation) or LessWrongenath but it doesn't work as well in verbal conversation.
Lessirim seems more euphonious, but I get why you wouldn't like the connotation.
Edit: Goodness, "Lessoth" is practically canon! And the self-deprecatory implications... my new favorite word.
Google is not turning up much for "lessoth" or "lessiath". Can you explain?
- Sindarin, the Noble Tongue
Relevant username is relevant.
Yay we're an Eldritch Abomination!
êl : star :: elenath : all the stars (in the sky)