Based on an earlier suggestion, here's an outreach thread where you can leave comments about any recent outreach that you have done to convey rationality-style ideas broadly. The goal of having this thread is to organize information about outreach and provide community support and recognition for raising the sanity waterline. Likewise, doing so can help inspire others to emulate some aspects of these good deeds through social proof and network effects.
This isn't very broad, but it went much better than I expected.
I wrote a series of letters to my grandmother describing my experiences at CFAR and describing what I learned. She is finding them very valuable and says that she has been discussing and sharing them with her friends to understand the ideas better. She wishes that she heard a lot of the ideas much earlier.
I'm so far only finished writing about half of my experiences and it has been wonderful. Rewriting everything I learned is helping me connect it in new ways. Since my grandmother doesn't know very much science, I haven't used much as much jargon, or have been very patient to explain all of the small pieces. It's good for learning what the inferential distances are.
Very glad to hear you're having this positive impact! Would you consider posting revised versions of the letters here, with personal details taken out? I think this would be a good resource for the community.
This Saturday (March 12) I'm giving a conference at an atheist meeting in Bogotá, Colombia. I'll be using a Spanish translation I made of the famous "You Are a Brain" slideshow.
Thanks! This would make my goals easier from here i could learn about other people's methods which they had successfully used for out reach then, also be able to design my own methods from other people's ideals making use of this ideals in future. I also would be able to share my taught's and ideals with others easily.
Like user:BenLowell, I reached out to an individual who shall remain anonymous. I wrote about this experience and how and why to do it more often in Look for Lone Correct Contrarians.
I hope that someday I would be able to organize an outreach and share it here in your outreach thread.
I hope that one day I will be able to organize an outreach providing community support to inspire others. One good deed after another. Who knows how many we can reach out! :)
Note, all these publications were for a broad audience, so couched in the language of science-based self-improvement, as are other Intentional Insights activities.
1) Published an article for a popular self-improvement website encouraging people to update their beliefs.
2) Published an article for a popular secular website introducing the concept of agency.
3) Published an article for a prominent self-improvement website introducing the basics and implications of dual process theory.
4) Published an article for a secular organization on Giving Games, workshop-style events promoting EA-style effective giving.
Isn't the idea of spreading rationality techniques, or terms like agency, or theories like dual process theory, without an evidence base suggesting that spreading those specific rationality techniques or concepts leads to x good thing kinda irrational? Theoretical constructs are useful for researchers, but not necessarily useful for applicants.
I'm not sure what's so irrational about it. I have a high probability estimate that spreading these ideas and raising the sanity waterline is a good thing. It would be irrational not to spread them due to opportunity costs.
Consider a parallel example: would you ask Eliezer to have tested out whether writing the Sequences is a good thing before writing them and spreading this thinking? If not, why not?
This is great, thanks for sharing it!
You're welcome Alex, and welcome to Less Wrong, glad you decided to take up my invitation!