Lumifer comments on [Link] Lifehack Article Promoting LessWrong, Rationality Dojo, and Rationality: From AI to Zombies - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Gleb_Tsipursky 14 November 2015 08:34PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 16 November 2015 09:35:53PM *  3 points [-]

I would probably characterise International Insights as cargo cult marketing, blindly following the Three-Ring Binder[1]. It says "advertise on the social networks" so, by golly, we'll advertise on the social networks! etc.

They built the sticks-and-mud control tower and are doing the parade ground drill. The airplanes with cargo should arrive any time now.

[1] "You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder - its DNA - xerox it, and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a left-turn lane." -- Neil Stephenson, Snow Crash.

Comment author: Gleb_Tsipursky 17 November 2015 12:53:27AM *  3 points [-]

Actually, we do have some airplanes arriving, if we equate airplanes to getting the rationality message out there to broad audiences, which is the whole point of Intentional Insights. A clear example is the placement of the above article in Lifehack, where it has been shared over 1K times, or this presentation to a humanist community group in Columbus, or this article in Salon. Our Advisory Board has attracted experts in the field of judgment and decision-making, education, and social work. We are doing exactly what we set out to do, so I think we can reasonably state that the airplanes are arriving.

And yes, we are using a Three-Ring Binder used by self-improvement groups and marketing gurus. That's the strategies we chose to follow in order to get rationality out to a broad audience. So we are not blindly following that model, but quite intentionally and agentively, using the kind of methods that will achieve our goals.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 17 November 2015 01:04:20PM 3 points [-]

Yeeeup.

I was giving him too much credit. He's not intentionally bad at this, he's -oblivious- to how bad he is at this.