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maia comments on Rationality witticisms suitable for t-shirts or bumper stickers - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: evand 15 June 2013 12:56PM

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Comment author: maia 16 June 2013 03:34:29AM 5 points [-]

People's brains might associate rationality with other concepts that are often seen on shirts, such as Jesus and Guns.

Oh no. We'd better stop writing in words. They might associate us with literate religious people.

Seriously though, do you live in a place where you see a lot of people wearing religious or gun-related T-shirts? I have only ever seen one person wear a T-shirt explicitly about Jesus.

Comment author: hedges 16 June 2013 12:17:36PM 1 point [-]

I don't understand. It seems to me that it would be very easy to make rationality seem like a (religious) cult. Wearing dorky clothes, knocking on people's doors to spread the joy, and handing out pamphlets praising our savior Rationality. We could even send volunteers to beg for money at airports: "Hello sir, would you like to help prevent the coming end of the world?"

Comment author: maia 16 June 2013 02:05:23PM 4 points [-]

I just don't associate T-shirts with religion as strongly as you do, I think.

This might be because I see a lot of people wearing nerdy T-shirts, or T-shirts associated with various interests/groups, like DnD, heir fraternities, or professional groups (chemical engineering society, etc.). From that perspective, having a rationality T-shirt just falls into one of those categories, and is therefore OK. It's just another medium that some people with certain interests use to signal to each other.

Like I said: do you see it differently? Are most of the T-shirts with slogans you see people wearing religiously-related?

Comment author: [deleted] 16 June 2013 06:05:03PM 0 points [-]

I guess there are huge geographical (and age-cohort) variations in this kind of stuff.

Comment author: hedges 16 June 2013 03:38:01PM *  0 points [-]

Religion was an example, coming from the general category of social subgroups that carry a large impact on identity and create a sense of exclusivity, which also includes every group you described.

I would rather not see rationality marginalized into such categories, in anyone's mind.

Comment author: maia 16 June 2013 07:10:25PM 0 points [-]

So, you think it is bad for rationality to be a) strongly associated with a person's identity, and/or b) create a sense of exclusivity, or belonging to a group. Is that right?

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but... why do you think this is a bad thing?