I was insufficiently clear: that was a question about your model of my motivation, not what you want my motivation to be. You can say you want to hear more, but if you act against people saying things, which do you expect to have more impact?

But in the spirit of kindness I will write a longer response.

This subject is difficult to talk about because your support here is tepid and reluctant at best, and your detractors are polite.

Now, you might look at OrphanWilde or Clarity and say "you call that polite?"--no, I don't. Those are the only people willing to break politeness and voice their lack of approval in detail. This anecdote about people talking in the quiet car comes to mind; lots of people look at something and realize "this is a problem" but only a few decide it's worth the cost to speak up about it. Disproportionately, those are going to be people who feel the cost less strongly.

There's a related common knowledge point--I might think this is likely net negative, but I don't know how many other people think this is a likely net negative. Only if I know that lots of people think this is a likely net negative, and that they are also aware that this is the sentiment, does it make sense to be the spokesperson for that view. If I know about that dynamic, I can deliberately try to jumpstart the process by paying the costs of establishing common knowledge.

And so by writing a short comment I was hoping to get the best of both worlds--signalling that I think this is likely a net negative and that this is an opinion that should be public, without having to go into the awkward details of why.

That's just the social dynamics. Let's get to the actual content. Why do I think this is likely a net negative? Normally I would write something like this privately, but I'll make it public because we're already having a public discussion.

I agree that it would be nice if the broader population knew more clear thinking techniques. It's not obvious to me that it would be nice if more of the broader population came to LW. I think that deliberative rationality, like discussed on LW, is mostly useful for people with lots of spare CPU cycles and a reflective personality.

Once, I shared some bread I baked with my then-landlord. She liked it, and asked me how I made it, and I said "oh, it's really easy, let me lend you the book I learned from." She demurred; she didn't like reading things, and learned much better watching people do things. Sure, I said, and invited her over the next time I baked some to show her how it's done.

The Sequences is very much "The Way for software engineer-types as radioed back by Eliezer Yudkowsky." I am pessimistic about attempts to get other types of people closer to The Way by translating The Sequences into a language closer to theirs; much more than just the language needs to change, because the inferential gaps are in different places. I strongly suspect your 'typical American' with IQ 100 would get more out of The Way as radioed back by someone closer to them. Byron Katie, with her workshops and her Youtube videos, is the sort of person I would model after if I was targeting a broad market.

I have not paid close attention to the material you've produced because I find it painful. From what little I have seen, I have mostly gotten the impression that it's poorly presented, and am some combination of unwilling and unable to provide you detailed criticism on why. I also think this is more than that I'm not the target audience--I don't have the negative reaction to pjeby that many do, for example, and he has much more of a self-help-style popular approach. To recklessly speculate on the underlying causes, I don't get the impression that you deeply respect or understand your audience, and what you think they want doesn't line up with what they actually want, in a way that seems transparent. It seems like How do you do, fellow kids?.

Standard writing advice is "write what you know." If you want to do rationality for college professors, great! I imagine that your comparative advantage at that would be higher. But just because you don't see people pointing rationality at the masses doesn't mean that's a hole you would be any good at filling. Among other things, I would worry that because you're not the target audience, you won't be aware of what's already there / what your competition is.