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John_Maxwell_IV comments on Cult impressions of Less Wrong/Singularity Institute - Less Wrong
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Speaking for myself, I know of at least four people who know of Less Wrong/SI but are not enthusiasts, possibly due to atmosphere issues.
An acquaintance of mine attends Less Wrong meetups and describes most of his friends as being Less Wrongers, but doesn't read Less Wrong and privately holds reservations about the entire singularity thing, saying that we can't hope to say much about the future more than 10 years in advance. He told me that one of his coworkers is also skeptical of the singularity.
A math student/coder I met at an entrepreneurship event told me Less Wrong had good ideas but was "too pretentious".
I was interviewing for an internship once, and the interviewer and I realized we had a mutual acquaintance who was a Less Wronger and SI donor. He asked me if I was part of that entire group, and I said yes. His attitude was a bit derisive.
The FHI are trying to do a broadly similar thing from within academia. They seem less kooky and cultish - probably as a result of trying harder to avoid cultishness.
I don't know why you would assume that it's "probably as a result of trying harder to avoid cultishness." My prior is that they just don't seem cultish because academics are often expected to hold unfamiliar positions.
I will say that I feel 95% confident that SIAI is not a cult because I spent time there (mjcurzi was there also), learned from their members, observed their processes of teaching rationality, hung out for fun, met other people who were interested, etc. Everyone involved seemed well meaning, curious, critical, etc. No one was blindly following orders. In the realm of teaching rationality, there was much agreement it should be taught, some agreement on how, but total openness to failure and finding alternate methods. I went to the minicamp wondering (along with John Salvatier) whether the SIAI was a cult and obtained lots of evidence to push me far away from that position.
I wonder if the cult accusation in part comes from the fact that it seems too good to be true, so we feel a need for defensive suspicion. Rationality is very much about changing one's mind and thinking about this we become suspicious that the goals of SIAI are to change our minds in a particular way. Then we discover that in fact the SIAI's goals (are in part) to change our minds in a particular way so we think our suspicions are justified.
My model tells me that stepping into a church is several orders of magnitude more psychologically dangerous than stepping into a Less Wrong meetup or the SIAI headquarters.
(The other 5% goes to things like "they are a cult and totally duped me and I don't know it", "they are a cult and I was too distant from their secret inner cabals to discover it", "they are a cult and I don't know what to look for", "they aren't a cult but they want to be one and are screwing it up", etc. I should probably feel more confident about this than 95%, but my own inclination to be suspicious of people who want to change how I think means I'm being generous with my error. I have a hard time giving these alternate stories credit.)
I would consider myself a pretty far outlier on LessWrong (as a female, ENFP (people-person, impulsive/intuitive), Hufflepuff type). So on one hand, my opinion may mean less, because I am not generally the "type" of person associated with LW. On the other hand, if you want to expand LW to more people, then I think some changes need to be made for other "types" of people to also feel comfortable here.
Along with the initial "cult" impression (which eventually dissipates, IMO), what threw me most is the harshness of the forums. I've been on here for about 4 months now, and it's still difficult for me to deal with. Also, I agree that topics like FAI, and Singularitarianism aren't necessarily the best things to be discussing when trying to get people interested in rationality.
I am well-aware that the things that would make LW more comfortable for me and others like me, would make it less comfortable for many of the current posters. So there is definitely a conflict of goals.
Goal A- Grow LW and make rationality more popular- Need to make LW more "nice" and perhaps focused on Instrumental Rationality rather than Singularity and FAI issues.
Goal B- Maintain current culture and level of posts.- Need to NOT significantly change LW, and perhaps focus more on the obscure posts that are extremely difficult for newer people to understand.
AFAICT pursuit of either of these goals will be at the detriment of the other goal.
Could you be more specific about what comes off as harsh to you?
If you'd rather address this as a private message, I'm still interested.
What comes across as harsh to me: down voting discussion posts because they're accidental duplicates/don't fit some idea of what a discussion post is supposed to be, a lot of down voting that goes on in general, unbridled or curt disagreement (like grognor's response to my post. You saw him cursing and yelling, right? I made this post because I thought the less wrong community could use optimization on the topics I wrote about, not because I wanted to antagonize anyone.)
PM'd response. General agreement with John below (which I didn't see until just now).
This person might have been in the same place as a math grad student I know. They read a little Less Wrong and were turned off. Then they attended a LW-style rationality seminar and responded positively, because it was more "compassionate". What they mean is this: A typical epistemology post on Less Wrong might sound something like
(That's not a quote.) Whereas the seminar sounded more like
Similarly, an instrumental-rationality post here might sound like
Whereas the seminar sounds more like
Of course, both approaches are good and necessary, and you can find both on Less Wrong.