I can't help but wonder if Charlie Sheen is deliberately trying to appear crazy in order to achieve some goal; for example, he might have been trying to get CBS to break its contract with him so he could sue them and get the money for being in the television show without actually having to do the work.
And Alec Baldwin, who might know, said the lawsuit might have real grounds.
Also, he's branding himself with easily repeatable memes, making a distinction between winning warlocks with tigerblood and loser trolls who can't process his brain, making a lot appearances on various programs, gathering an online following, and selling merchandise with his slogans. That really looks like political campaigning, but he would have to explain the craziness as a tactic in order to get past it. I think it's more likely he's recruiting a fan base for a future project whe...
This post is prompted by a short discussion with Wei Dai. He says:
Perhaps we should get other causes to participate/recruit on LW? Actually, why aren't they here already? We have a bunch of individuals with non-SIAI interests, but no causes other than SIAI, despite Eliezer repeatedly saying that they would be welcome.
He has a good point!
Here's my plug, for the cause I spend lots of my time and energy on, Wikimedia/Wikipedia:
Wikipedia/Wikimedia is more analogous to a software project than an ordinary charity - your money is useful and most welcomed, but the real contribution is your knowledge.
Or, more generally: create educational material under a free content licence. If it's CC-by-sa, CC-by or public domain, it can interbreed and propagate.
(Then we need to fix the things wrong with the editor experience on Wikipedia ... though the Wikimedia Foundation is paying serious attention to that as well of late. In the meantime, if you find Wikipedia too personally annoying to participate in directly, writing your own site and CC-by-sa'ing it still helps a lot.)
What good causes can you think of that are relevant to LessWrong and its community, that leverage effectiveness through rationality? (I'm thinking beyond just legally-blessed charities, right down to the "small circle of conspirators" level of trying together to get something done.) As well as SIAI, LW has previously had plugs for GiveWell. What do you spend your time, effort and/or money on?