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nydwracu comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89 - Less Wrong
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Surely there are better ways to change the world then bringing more people into movements!
I'm only tangentially involved with this rationality stuff, but I've gotten the impression that one of its great strengths is in bringing together a lot of very smart people, who can then go on to have more concrete impacts in other ways. If that's accurate, bringing in people who'd be scared off by Hanson would be actively detrimental to the goal of changing the world.
What goals do you have that are better served by quantity than quality? (I have both goals that I need to think about quantity for and goals that I need to think about quality for. I try to keep them separate.)
Why dither when you can have both? The indiscreet have no monopoly on either intelligence or rationality.
But you're talking about bringing in people known to fail at rationality due to signaling games. Do you think they can be eventually brought around, or?
Everyone fails at rationality due to signaling games.
Yes, but not everyone insists on guilt by association with anyone saying politically incorrect things.
No, but enough people do that it's an important consideration.
I don't mean that a "little guilt by association with anyone saying politically incorrect things" is enough to immediately roll back whatever one was doing. But it's enough to reevaluate. And, on reevaluation, it added more weight to a damning line of thought that already existed.
So I've weighed both sides and found yours wanting. Your hostile reaction isn't doing you any favors. In fact, it convinces me all the more that the path I'm turning away from, the one where I introduce friends to Less Wrong, was not a worthwhile path.
Going by your description of your friends, I'm inclined to agree.
I just want to say that I like this comment, and you are a pretty cool guy.
Thanks.
One of my myriad goals is to share the concepts and (ah-hem) methods of rationality with future students of mine, through mere source linking in the beginning and with a more interwoven manner after I am already established in my teaching career. This is not only better served by quantity, it's designed specifically to increase quantity, for the benefits that having a more rational population bring.