This reminds me of the old author's adage: "Never tell anyone about the story, until you're done writing it!" Because if you do you lose motivation for writing it?

I suspect you could adapt this technique for other endeavours. Instead of telling the media about the the turbine motor which powers the tesla coils and gattling guns that you're working on, just tell them you have something really big in the mix - maintain the air of secrecy until you actually accomplish it. That way you'll have internal and external motivations in alignment.

Heck, even explain why you're not telling them everything - that'll give you deep wisdom.

That's another great example.

I wonder how he deals with people who don't fit into the labels of 'conservative' and 'liberal', though...

I'm reminded of the post a while back on whether an Atheist/Rationalist society would be effective in war.

I have trouble understanding why they wouldn't be (which seems to be the opinion of most of the others here). In an objective moral sense, if Truth doesn't matter more than Winning, then what does? Implicitly most here behave in accordance to that statement - I'd suggest that the amount of time devoted to this site exceeds the amount required for merely winning in contemporary society - but most seem to balk at the concept that Truth might require the sacrifice of life.

Maybe it's scope insensitivity. Risking 1 utilon for 10 utilons (at fifty/fifty odds) is a gamble everyone here would take - but when the risk is 1000 utilons for 10 000 utilons, even though it's the same gamble, it's harder to see it as such (this being the major pause which Yudkowki's dust-mote vs torture analogy brought out).

If we are, in fact, advocating Truth over mere Winning, there are going to be casualties along the way; in concrete terms, if my goal is an equal and just society, then I will be called upon to intervene in any gay-bashings I witness, at the risk of my own life.

So yes, the Atheist/Rationalist society - assuming they have that meta level of moral awareness - will go to war and be more viciously stalwart than any religious group could possibly hope to be. And if Wednesday must choose between Truth and Winning - as long as she isn't a lecherous societal leech, concerned only with besting her opponents, rules be damned - she'll choose the former, regardless of the expense to herself.

I'd suggest framing the "How religious was your family" question in a specific cultural context. For example, my family was 'Average Religious' for Canada, but from what I've gathered about the United Stats, that would make them less religious than normal.

Also, I'd be interested to learn what percentage of the members here own weapons for self defense (as opposed to decorative, or other purposes). I'd also suggest the term 'weapons' over 'guns,' once again due to many members living outside of the United States.

Paraphrase:

"Any free citizen needs to have a basic understanding of Math, Science, and History; without those they can't be a free citizen."

Robert A. Heinlein

*He may have said Economics, not Science.

Do women, on average, have more connected social lives than men do? It's very easy for a few people with no life to effectively dominate a community like this simply by spending more time than any "normal" person would want to. If women are more likely to have "a life" and less likely to become fixated on a specific hobby, that could explain why we see fewer women commenters. (One reason I'm here is that I have very few people in Real Life that I talk to regularly.)

A possibly relevant data point is that males are roughly four times more likely to have autism or Asperger's syndrome than females.

We should also look for specific, teachable “gateway” skills that might allow more women to participate in LW.

I remember reading some story about how women did persistently worse in a particular organic chemistry course than men did, until they added a training session explicitly teaching mental rotation (there’s a gender gap in visual/spatial abilities), after which point test scores equalized because mentally rotating the molecules was no longer a barrier, and other skills could come into play. I can’t find the webpage, though (though there’s a bit of corroboration here), so take the story with a grain of salt.

Given the comments elsewhere in the thread about gender differences in expected agreeableness, and about women being discouraged by downvotes, it sounds like one plausible barrier concerns how to have heart in the face of criticism. Maybe someone should write a post or two on process/growth vs. trait models of ability, and how to have the former. Or on how to keep in mind that people are responding to your words, not your inner soul, and that there’s some system of rules that determines their responses that you can learn to hack. Or something along these lines. There are skills here, and they can be broken into small, learnable chunks. And probably many LW-ers could use a boost here; I know I’d like one.

Such posts could be linked to a welcome page for newcomers, with mention that some find LW difficult at first and later like it and that these posts might help the transition period, but without mention of gender.

I think this stems from the separation of ideas from the self, which is really the first step on the road to rationality. Anyone who hasn't made that step feels like they are being personally attacked, and it isn't an easy step to make.

Even if you've made the step in general, it doesn't help when people use status-signaling language in their comments. e.g. "Have you thought of X?" is a lot better than, say, "Clearly you haven't paid any attention to X", if your goal is to actually improve discussion, rather than to get a charge from demolishing your opponent. (I suspect that the concept of a martial art of rationality doesn't help with this, from a priming perspective.)

Setting a frame of etiquette that indicates we are all here to help people become rationalists rather than to show off our own skills at rationalism might help with this.

This is true. In order to win a war, you must convince your enemy that he has lost. Otherwise, he will simply rise to fight again, at a time of his own choosing.

Israel has won many battles, but I don't think it's won any wars - its enemies are still trying to fight it.

This struck me as relevant:

"If we desire to defeat the enemy, we must proportion our efforts to his powers of resistance. This is expressed by the power of two factors which cannot be separated, namely, the sum of available means and the strength of the Will."

Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, Chapter 1, Section 5. Utmost Exertion of Powers

(I'm still planning on putting together a post of game theory, war, and morality, but I think most of you will be inclined to disagree with my conclusions, so I'm really doing my homework for this one.)