I have several questions related to this:
- Did anyone reading this initially get the impression that Less Wrong was cultish when they first discovered it?
- If so, can you suggest any easy steps we could take?
- Is it possible that there are aspects of the atmosphere here that are driving away intelligent, rationally inclined people who might otherwise be interested in Less Wrong?
- Do you know anyone who might fall into this category, i.e. someone who was exposed to Less Wrong but failed to become an enthusiast, potentially due to atmosphere issues?
- Is it possible that our culture might be different if these folks were hanging around and contributing? Presumably they are disproportionately represented among certain personality types.
If you visit any Less Wrong page for the first time in a cookies-free browsing mode, you'll see this message for new users:
Less Wrong is a community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality. Please visit our About page for more information.
Here are the worst violators I see on that about page:
Some people consider the Sequences the most important work they have ever read.
Generally, if your comment or post is on-topic, thoughtful, and shows that you're familiar with the Sequences, your comment or post will be upvoted.
Many of us believe in the importance of developing qualities described in Twelve Virtues of Rationality: [insert mystical sounding description of how to be rational here]
And on the sequences page:
If you don't read the sequences on Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions and Reductionism, little else on Less Wrong will make much sense.
This seems obviously false to me.
These may not seem like cultish statements to you, but keep in mind that you are one of the ones who decided to stick around. The typical mind fallacy may be at work. Clearly there is some population that thinks Less Wrong seems cultish, as evidenced by Google's autocomplete, and these look like good candidates for things that makes them think this.
We can fix this stuff easily, since they're both wiki pages, but I thought they were examples worth discussing.
In general, I think we could stand more community effort being put into improving our about page, which you can do now here. It's not that visible to veteran users, but it is very visible to newcomers. Note that it looks as though you'll have to click the little "Force reload from wiki" button on the about page itself for your changes to be published.
I think it's not an ethical imperative unless you're unusually altruistic.
Also I feel the whole FAI thing is a little questionable from a client relations point of view. Rationality education should be about helping people achieve their own goals. When we meet someone who is confused about their goals, or just young and impressionable, the right thing for us is not to take the opportunity and rewrite their goals while we're educating them.
It's hard not to rewrite someone's goals while educating them, because one of our inborn drives is to gain the respect and approval of people around us, and if that means overwriting some of our goals, well that's a small price to pay as far as that part of our brain is concerned. For example, I stayed for about a week at the SIAI house a few years ago when attending the decision theory workshop, and my values shift in obvious ways just by being surrounded by more altruistic people and talking with them. (The effect largely dissipated after I left, but not... (read more)