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lukeprog comments on Elevator pitches/responses for rationality / AI - Less Wrong
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First, thanks to lukeprog for posting this discussion post. The Ohio Less Wrong group has been discussing elevator pitches, and the comments here are sure to help us!
I often end up pitching LW stuff to people who are atheists, but not rationalists. I think this type of person is a great potential "recruit", because they WANT a community, but often find the atheistic community a little too "patting ourselves on the back"-ish (as do I). My general pitch is that Less Wrong is like the next step: "Yeah, we're all (mainly) atheists, but now what??"
Here's an example from a recent facebook comment thread:
Then I point them to Methods of Rationality, and hopefully now to our meetups.
Coming up with elevator pitches/responses strikes me as a great activity to do at LW meetups.
Or to post IM logs of, a la the AI-Box experiments.
If there is interest in some discussion logs to analyse, I'm having a lengthy FB thread with a fairly intelligent theist I knew from rabbinical seminary. I don't think his arguments are particularly good, and I'm not great at arguing either, though I hope my content is a bit more convincing despite lack of style. I do not expect to change his mind - he holds a rabbinical position and chances of him changing his mind are near zero, but there are some observers I care about and this is an exercise in rationality for me. I can anonymize and post if people find this kind of thing interesting, I would certainly appreciate some feedback.
Well, I would find it interesting, but as a point of order: maybe you should let him know you're doing this (even anonymizedly) so he can get help from a gang of his friends too?
I have no intention to have this turn into a public debate out of a Facebook thread. This is a chance to improve my rationality and argumentation skills.
Yes... I took "there are some observers I care about" plus "I would appreciate some feedback" to mean 'I'd like some debate advice (which I will be applying)'. If that's not getting help from a gang of your friends, I don't know what is.
You're correct, it's a side benefit, but having a thread evolve into some kind of public debate looks silly. If public debate on such issues is desired there are order of magnitude better ways of doing it than this.
I don't think pedanterrific is planning to have a bunch of LWers start commenting on the thread in support of atheism. I think he's expecting a bunch of LWers to give you advice in this thread, which you will then use in your own posts. And he thinks the rabbi should be given an opportunity to ask his own community for similar advice. To use a boxing metaphor, nobody else is going to start fighting, but you're going to have more coaches and your opponent should too.
I got that, but having to tell him that there are a bunch of people helping, bring your friends, seems awkward in the context. I'd rather not have the help and just let people view the log as a post mortem, for improving my rationality. Another part of it is the fact that I'm actually doing ok in the argument (I think) and "calling for help" would look like/could be spun as a weakness.
Sure, I'd be interested.