You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Viliam_Bur comments on What are your contrarian views? - Less Wrong Discussion

10 Post author: Metus 15 September 2014 09:17AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (806)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: chaosmage 15 September 2014 10:02:01AM *  6 points [-]

I think raising the sanity waterline is the most important thing we can do, and we do too little of it because our discussions tend to happen amongst ourselves, i.e. with people who are far from that waterline.

Any attempt to educate people, including the attempt to educate them about rationality, should focus on teens, or where possible on children, in order to create maximum impact. HPMOR does that to some degree, but Less Wrong usually presupposes cognitive skills that the very people who'd benefit most from rationality do not possess. It is very much in-group discussion. If "refining the art of human rationality" is our goal, we should be doing a lot more outreach and a lot more production of very accessible rationality materials. Simplified versions of the sequences, with more pictures and more happiness. CC licensed leaflets and posters. Classroom materials. Videos (compare the SciShow video on Bayes' Theorem), because that's how many curious young minds get their extracurricular knowledge these days.

In fact, if we crowdfunded somebody with education materials production experience to do that (or better yet, crowdfund two or three and let them compete for the next round), I'd contribute significantly.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 15 September 2014 06:59:15PM 7 points [-]

Is this supposed to be a contrarian view on LW? If it is, I am going to cry.

Unless we reach a lot of young people, we risk than in 30-40 years the "rationalist movement" will be mostly a group of old people spending most of their complaining about how things were better when they were young. And the change will come so gradually we may not even notice it.

Comment author: chaosmage 16 September 2014 07:35:51AM 4 points [-]

I don't think anybody has explicitly spoken out against it, but it seems to me everyone acts quite opposed to the idea.