Cult impressions of Less Wrong/Singularity Institute

John_Maxwell

If you type "less wrong c" or "singularity institute c" into Google, you'll find that people are searching for "less wrong cult" and "singularity institute cult" with some frequency. (EDIT: Please avoid testing this out, so Google doesn't autocomplete your search and reinforce their positions. This kind of problem can be hard to get rid of. Click these instead: less wrong cult, singularity institute cult.)

There doesn't seem to be anyone arguing seriously that Less Wrong is a cult, but we do give some newcomers that impression.

I have several questions related to this:

Did anyone reading this initially get the impression that Less Wrong was cultish when they first discovered it?
If so, can you suggest any easy steps we could take?
Is it possible that there are aspects of the atmosphere here that are driving away intelligent, rationally inclined people who might otherwise be interested in Less Wrong?
Do you know anyone who might fall into this category, i.e. someone who was exposed to Less Wrong but failed to become an enthusiast, potentially due to atmosphere issues?
Is it possible that our culture might be different if these folks were hanging around and contributing? Presumably they are disproportionately represented among certain personality types.

If you visit any Less Wrong page for the first time in a cookies-free browsing mode, you'll see this message for new users:

Less Wrong is a community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality. Please visit our About page for more information.

Here are the worst violators I see on that about page:

Some people consider the Sequences the most important work they have ever read.

Generally, if your comment or post is on-topic, thoughtful, and shows that you're familiar with the Sequences, your comment or post will be upvoted.

Many of us believe in the importance of developing qualities described in Twelve Virtues of Rationality: [insert mystical sounding description of how to be rational here]

And on the sequences page:

If you don't read the sequences on Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions and Reductionism, little else on Less Wrong will make much sense.

This seems obviously false to me.

These may not seem like cultish statements to you, but keep in mind that you are one of the ones who decided to stick around. The typical mind fallacy may be at work. Clearly there is some population that thinks Less Wrong seems cultish, as evidenced by Google's autocomplete, and these look like good candidates for things that makes them think this.

We can fix this stuff easily, since they're both wiki pages, but I thought they were examples worth discussing.

In general, I think we could stand more community effort being put into improving our about page, which you can do now here. It's not that visible to veteran users, but it is very visible to newcomers. Note that it looks as though you'll have to click the little "Force reload from wiki" button on the about page itself for your changes to be published.

There doesn't seem to be anyone arguing seriously that Less Wrong is a cult, but we do give some newcomers that impression.

I have several questions related to this:

Did anyone reading this initially get the impression that Less Wrong was cultish when they first discovered it?
If so, can you suggest any easy steps we could take?
Is it possible that there are aspects of the atmosphere here that are driving away intelligent, rationally inclined people who might otherwise be interested in Less Wrong?
Do you know anyone who might fall into this category, i.e. someone who was exposed to Less Wrong but failed to become an enthusiast, potentially due to atmosphere issues?
Is it possible that our culture might be different if these folks were hanging around and contributing? Presumably they are disproportionately represented among certain personality types.

If you visit any Less Wrong page for the first time in a cookies-free browsing mode, you'll see this message for new users:

Less Wrong is a community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality. Please visit our About page for more information.

Here are the worst violators I see on that about page:

Some people consider the Sequences the most important work they have ever read.

Generally, if your comment or post is on-topic, thoughtful, and shows that you're familiar with the Sequences, your comment or post will be upvoted.

Many of us believe in the importance of developing qualities described in Twelve Virtues of Rationality: [insert mystical sounding description of how to be rational here]

And on the sequences page:

If you don't read the sequences on Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions and Reductionism, little else on Less Wrong will make much sense.

This seems obviously false to me.

We can fix this stuff easily, since they're both wiki pages, but I thought they were examples worth discussing.

Upvoted for sounding a lot like the kinds of complaints I've heard people say about LW and SIAI.

There is a large barrier to entry here, and if we want to win more, we can't just blame people for not understanding the message. I've been discussing with a friend what is wrong with LW pedagogy (though he admits that it is certainly getting better). To paraphrase his three main arguments:

We often use nomenclature without necessary explanation for a general audience. Sure, we make generous use of hyperlinks, but without some effort to bridge the gap in the body of our text, we aren't exactly signalling openness or friendliness.
We have a tendency to preach to the converted. Or as the friend said:

It's that classic mistake of talking in a way where you're convincing or explaining something to yourself or the well-initiated instead of laying out the roadwork for foreigners.

He brought up an example for how material might be introduced to newly exposed folk.

If This American Life explained the financial crisis in an hour so that four million people improved on a written test on the subject, it's clear you can explain complicated material from near-scratch.

The curse of knowledge can be overcome, but it takes desire and some finesse.

If we intend to win the hearts and minds of the people (or at least make a mark in the greater world), we might want to work on evocative imagery that isn't immediately cool to futurists and technophiles and sci-fi geeks. Sure, keep the awesome stuff we have, but maybe look for metaphors that work in other domains. In my mind, ideally, we should build a database of ideas and their parallels in other fields (using some degree of field work to actually find the words that work). Eliezer has done some great work this way, like with HP:MoR, and some of his short stories. Maybe the SIAI could shell out money to fund focus groups and interviews a la Luntz, who in my mind is a great Dark Side example of winning.

Edit for formatting and to mention that outreach and not seeming culty seem to be intertwined in a weird way. It is obvious to me that being The Esoteric Order Of LessWrong doesn't do the world any favors (or us, for that matter), but that by working on outreach, we can be accused of proselytizing. I think it comes down to doing what works without doing the death spiral stuff. And it seems to me that no matter what is done, detractors are going to detract.

If This American Life explained the financial crisis in an hour so that four million people improved on a written test on the subject, it's clear you can explain complicated material from near-scratch.

That's an inspiring goal, but it might be worth pointing out that the This American Life episode was extraordinary-- when I heard it, it seemed immediately obvious that this was the most impressively clear and efficient hour I'd heard in the course of a lot of years of listening to NPR.

I'm not saying it's so magical that it can't be equaled, I'm saying that it might be worth studying.

42

Cult impressions of Less Wrong/Singularity Institute

42

42

42

Cult impressions of Less Wrong/Singularity Institute

42

42