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gwern comments on Open thread, Dec. 8 - Dec. 15, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Harper's Magazine seems to be featuring LW, among others, in its January 2015 issue in the article "Come With Us if You Want to Live: Among the apocalyptic libertarians of Silicon Valley" (apparently features Vassar, MIRI, and LW survey stats).
It's paywalled, there don't yet seem to be any copies floating around, and I can't get it through my university proxy or Libgen. Can anyone get a copy?
And here it is, as a pdf! (I finally thought of trying to log in as a subscriber)
Thanks. I've excerpted it at http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/ldv/harpers_magazine_article_on_lwmiricfar_and/
I have it in hard copy, but all attempts so far to scan or photograph it have been foiled. I'm working on it, though; by far the best media piece on Less Wrong I've seen so far.
ETA - To give you an idea: the author personally attended a CFAR workshop and visited MIRI, and upon closer inspection one can make out part of the Map of Bay Area Memespace in one of the otherwise-trite collage illustrations.
First quote about Lesswrong:
I have to say I appreciated the first description of LessWrong as "confoundingly scholastic".
That seems somewhat uncharitable. Most critiques of Less Wrong I've read seem to be predominantly predicated on the fact that it seems "weird". This is unfortunate, in my opinion, as Less Wrong actually has a lot to offer, and it's a shame that people are turned off by their first glance. Articles like this only serve to heighten the effect, especially since readers might not even visit Less Wrong after reading such an article. I have to confess that I wish journalists wouldn't do this sort of thing...
...but that's little more than a pipe dream. Non-academic journalism has notoriously low standards, which means they can pretty much write whatever they want. Which means that if we want to stop getting called out as "weird", we're the ones who're going to need to do something about it...
The article basically says that we are a bunch of weird people with an average IQ of 138. That means that most people who read the article won't think they are at home on LW and most people probably wouldn't. On the other hand readers who want to take part in a high level discussion forum, might be motivated to check out LW.
It's okay that not everybody wants to join LW.