Viliam_Bur comments on PROPOSAL: LessWrong for Teenagers - Less Wrong

19 [deleted] 08 November 2012 06:09AM

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Comment author: Viliam_Bur 09 November 2012 03:06:05PM 1 point [-]

We could have "rational thinking for teachers", a "rational thinking for programmers", a "rational thinking for musicians", a "rational thinking for women" and a "rational thinking for teenagers" group. At the end you have 10 different groups.

It depends.

If the Discussion page gets flooded by dozen "rationality for musicians" articles, it could make the members without musical interests feel excluded. One such article in a few months would not have the same effect. And it could make the musicians very happy.

One can be more specific about "applied rationality for musicians" than about "applied rationality for artists", which is still more specific than "applied rationality" in general. Perhaps we should replace "rational" with "optimal" here. But anyway, the goal of rationality is to win. We can win more by sharing the fruit we already found; even if doing that does not directly increase one's fruit-seeking skills.

(Personally, I would love to see the "rational thinking for programmers" topic, but I am afraid that this topic has a very high chance of jumping to a dozen articles per month when the taboo is broken, so I will rather not break that taboo. But writing for teenagers seems much safer.)

Comment author: ChristianKl 09 November 2012 03:42:19PM 3 points [-]

If the Discussion page gets flooded by dozen "rationality for musicians" articles, it could make the members without musical interests feel excluded.

If you do have the discussion page flooded by dozen of "rationality for musicians" articles it's time to open a separate forum for them. I don't see a reason to open that forum before that happens.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 09 November 2012 06:26:54PM 1 point [-]

Maybe "optimizing" rather than "optimal"? It's hard to be sure you've gotten something as right as possible.