I do, actually, which raises the question as to why you think I didn't have that in mind. Did you not realize that LessWrong and pretty much our entire world civilization is in such a didactic state?
I did not. And do not, in fact. Those didactic states are states where there's someone who's clearly the teacher (primarily interested in passing on knowledge), and someone who's clearly the pupil (or pupils plural — but however many, the pupil(s) are well aware they're not the teacher). But on LW and most other places where grown-ups discuss things, things don't run so much on a teacher-student model; it's mostly peers arguing with each other on a roughly even footing, and in a lot of those arguments, nobody's thinking of themselves as the pupil. Even though people are still learning from each other in such situations, they're not what I had in mind as "didactic".
In hindsight I should've used the word "pedagogical" rather than "didactic".
Moreover, if we weren't in such a didactic state, why does LessWrong exist? Does the art of human rationality not have vast room to improve?
I think these questions are driven by misunderstandings of what I meant by "didactic context". What I wrote above might clarify.
This would appear to be false.
So it would. Thank you for taking the time to track down those articles.
Thank you for updating in the face of evidence.
I was using a rough estimate for legitimacy; I really just want LessWrong to be more of an active force in the world.
Fair enough.
In each and every one of those cases you will find that the person had not spent sufficient time reflecting on the usefulness of thought and refined reasoning, or else uFAI and existential risks. The state these ideas existed in their mind in was not a "deep belief" state, but rather a relatively blank slate primed to receive the first idea that came to mind.
I interpreted "deep beliefs" as referring to beliefs that matter enough to affect the believer's behaviour. Under that interpretation, any new belief that leads to a major, consistent change in someone's behaviour (e.g. changing jobs to donate thousands to MIRI) would seem to imply a change in deep beliefs. You evidently have a different meaning of "deep belief" in mind but I still don't know what (even after reading that paragraph and the one after it).
"Self-aware" is a non-trivial aspect here. It's not something I can communicate simply by asserting it, because you can only trust the assertion so much, especially given that the assertion is about you. [...] "If you've properly taken the time to reflect on the opening question of this comment," is more than enough of a clue. [...] I'm really not here to convince you of my societal/managerial competence by direct demonstration; this is just gathering critical calibration data on my part.
I've already spelled it out pretty damn concisely. Recognizing the differences between yourself and the people you like to think are very much like you is uniquely up to you.
Hrmm. Well, that wraps up that branch of the conversation quite tidily.
LessWrong's memetic moment in history isn't necessarily at a point in time at which it is active.
I suppose that's true...
That's sort of the premise of the concern of LessWrong's immediate memeplex going viral. As the population's intelligence slowly increases, it'll eventually hit a sweet spot where LessWrong's content will resonate with it.
...but I'd still soften that "will" to a "might, someday, conceivably". Things don't go viral in so predictable a fashion. (And even when they do, they often go viral as short-term fads.)
Another reason I'm not too worried: the downsides of LW memes invading everyone's head would be relatively small. People believe all sorts of screamingly irrational and generally worse things already.
Making fun of things is actually really easy if you try even a little bit. Nearly anything can be made fun of, and in practice nearly anything is made fun of. This is concerning for several reasons.
First, if you are trying to do something, whether or not people are making fun of it is not necessarily a good signal as to whether or not it's actually good. A lot of good things get made fun of. A lot of bad things get made fun of. Thus, whether or not something gets made fun of is not necessarily a good indicator of whether or not it's actually good.[1] Optimally, only bad things would get made fun of, making it easy to determine what is good and bad - but this doesn't appear to be the case.
Second, if you want to make something sound bad, it's really easy. If you don't believe this, just take a politician or organization that you like and search for some criticism of it. It should generally be trivial to find people that are making fun of it for reasons that would sound compelling to a casual observer - even if those reasons aren't actually good. But a casual observer doesn't know that and thus can easily be fooled.[2]
Further, the fact that it's easy to make fun of things makes it so that a clever person can find themselves unnecessarily contemptuous of anything and everything. This sort of premature cynicism tends to be a failure mode I've noticed in many otherwise very intelligent people. Finding faults with things is pretty trivial, but you can quickly go from "it's easy to find faults with everything" to "everything is bad." This tends to be an undesirable mode of thinking - even if true, it's not particularly helpful.
[1] Whether or not something gets made fun of by the right people is a better indicator. That said, if you know who the right people are you usually have access to much more reliable methods.
[2] If you're still not convinced, take a politician or organization that you do like and really truly try to write an argument against that politician or organization. Note that this might actually change your opinion, so be warned.