elharo comments on Open Thread, July 1-15, 2013 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Vaniver 01 July 2013 05:10PM

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Comment author: Fhyve 03 July 2013 06:13:52AM *  4 points [-]

How do you upgrade people into rationalists? In particular, I want to upgrade some younger math-inclined people into rationalists (peers at university). My current strategy is:

  • incidentally name drop my local rationalist meetup group, (ie. "I am going to a rationalist's meetup on Sunday")

  • link to lesswrong articles whenever relevant (rarely)

  • be awesome and claim that I am awesome because I am a rationalist (which neglects a bunch of other factors for why I am so awesome)

  • when asked, motivate rationality by indicating a whole bunch of cognitive biases, and how we don't naturally have principles of correct reasoning, we just do what intuitively seems right

This is quite passive (other than name dropping and article linking) and mostly requires them to ask me about it first. I want something more proactive that is not straight up linking to Lesswrong, because the first thing they go to is The Simple Truth and immediately get turned off by it (The Simple Truth shouldn't be the first post in the first sequence that you are recommended to read on Lesswrong). This has happened a number of times.

Comment author: elharo 05 July 2013 01:08:11PM *  2 points [-]

Taboo "rationalist". That is, don't make it sound like this is a group or ideology anyone is joining (because, done right, it isn't.)

Discuss, as appropriate, cognitive biases and specific techniques. E.g. planning fallacy, "I notice I am confused", "what do you think you know and why do you think you know it?", confirmation bias, etc.

Tell friends about cool books you've read like HPMoR, Thinking Fast and Slow, Predictably Irrational, Getting Things Done, and so forth. If possible read these books in paper (not ebooks) where your friends can see what you're reading and ask you about them.