In real life you sometimes get people who write, using different words, under dozen different articles: "I suspect that this all is just Eliezer's cult designed to extract money from naive people". How much of that is acceptable criticism, and how much is just annoying? Discussing that thing once, thoroughly? Yes, definitely. Dropping the idea around all the time? That's just poluting the space. Problem is that at the moment some people are already deeply annoyed, other people go meta and say we need criticism.
Democracy does not work well online. In real life, one person cannot be at more than one place. Online, one person is enough to be everywhere (within one website). In real life, you can avoid an annoying person by simply going elsewhere and taking your friends with you. Online, you must somehow stop people from doing annoying things, otherwise there is no way to avoid them, except by avoiding the whole website.
I don't have a problem with criticism. I have a problem with boring repetitive criticism. Someone says that having a ceremony is cultish. Okay. Let's discuss that. Someone says again that having a ceremony is cultish. Okay, here is some explanation, here are the differences. Someone says yet again that having a ceremony is cultish. Okay, I heard that already; give me a new information or stop repeating yourself. -- I would have no problem if someone wrote a critical article explaining the dangers of having a ceremony even in its LessWrongian variant, and proposed alternative ways to create personal connections. But dropping hostile comments to other peoples' articles is so much easier. Well, I am not impressed.
People who try hard to appear smart typically have a problem cooperating on anything. For a textbook example, visit Mensa. It is a miracle that Mensa ever gets anything done, because every time anyone proposes an idea, all people loudly disagree, to signal that they are not sheep. Okay, I get it, they are not sheep; but it is still funny how an organization consisting purely of highly intelligent people became such a laughing stock for the rest of the world. Probably they were too busy signalling that they are not sheep, so they missed the forest for the trees.
There is a time to disagree, and there is also a time to agree. If someone has a policy of e.g. never singing a song together with other people (because that might irrationally modify their feelings towards them), I accept if they decide to never sing a song together with fellow rationalists. Yes, they are consistent. I respect that. But if someone is willing to sing a song with random strangers, but would never sing a song with rationalists, that would be reversing stupidity. It means sabotaging yourself and your goals; trying to get some nonexistent points for doing things the hard way.
The proper moment for criticism is when something worth criticising happens. Not when someone merely pattern-matches something to something, and cannot stop obsessing about that. Here is a group of people who all voluntarily decided to share some powerful emotional moments together. Did they commit suicide later? No! Did they donate all their money to Eliezer? No! Did they send disconnection letters to their relatives? No! Did they refuse to talk with their friends who didn't participate in the ritual? No! Did they kill someone or send death threats? No! Are they reduced to mindless zombies? No! Are they keeping the details secret from the rest of the world, threatening to punish whistleblowers? No! -- So why the hell does someone keep repeating that it essentially is the same thing; and why should I pay any attention at all to that kind of criticism?
Perhaps the thing to do is write a single post capturing essentially this argument, and additionally maintain in that post a list of topics which have come up so often in comments that "we" (whatever "we" means in this context) have decided it's passed the "stop making this point in isolated comments!" threshold, and encourage the community standard of responding to Yet Another Instance of Discussion X with some variant of "Discussions of this topic belong here; see topic #17" rather than repeating the same substant...
On Sunday, April 14th, the Boston group held our first Schelling Day celebration. The idea was to open up and share our private selves. It was a rousing success.
That doesn't do it justice. Let me try again.
By all the stars, you guys. This was beautiful.
About fifteen people showed up. Most of us were from the hard core of Boston's rationalist community. Two of us were new to the group. (I'm hopeful this will convince them to start attending our regular meetups.) There was a brief explanation and a few vital clarifying questions before we began the ritual, which went for maybe 90-120 minutes, including a couple of short breaks. All of us spoke at least once.
I don't want to go into specifics about what people said, but it was powerful. I learned about sides of my friends I would never have guessed at. People went into depth about issues I had only seen from the surface. I heard things that will make me change my behavior towards my friends. I saw angst and guilt and hope and pain and wild joy. I saw compassion and uncertainty and courage. People said things they had never said before, things I might not have been brave enough even to think in their position. I had tears in my eyes more than once.
Speaking went remarkably smoothly. I set a timer for five minutes for each speaker, but it never ran out. (Five minutes is a surprisingly long time.) Partway through, Julia suggested we leave a long moment of silence between speakers, which was a very good idea and I wish I'd done a better job of enforcing it.
Afterwards, we had a potluck and mingled in small groups. At first we talked about our revelations, but over time our conversation started drifting towards our usual topics. Next time, in order to keep us on topic, I'll probably try adding more structure to this stage.
The other area I wanted to improve was the ritual with the snacks. We had five categories: Struggles, Confessions, Hopes, Joys, and Other. There weren't many Hopes, and there wasn't much distinction between Struggles and Confessions. I'll change this for next time, possibly to Hardships, Joys, Histories, and Other. There's room for improvement in the specific snacks I picked, too.
This celebration was the most powerful thing I've experienced since the Solstice megameetup. I don't think I want to do this again soon—it was one of the most exhausting things I've ever done, even if I didn't notice until after I'd left—but I know I want to do it again sometime.
To everyone who came: I'm so proud of what you did and who you are. Thank you for your courage and sincerity.