I wouldn't be so quick to make that assumption. There's a strong "post-modernism" "post-rationalism" bent amongst the political-left -- and based on the published "demands lists" the OWS-esque groups are reliably well on the political-left.

Yeah I realized that myself shortly after writing it, mostly the 'blind monkey' bit.

What do you mean here? You're not the one who wrote that comment.

If I recall correctly I saw a facebook update from Louie Helm stating that he was going to be at Occupy UC Berkeley.

I would suggest that, yes, following the whole occupy movement is important for LessWrongians, and, yes, there is a giant community organization experiment occurring with vital lessons to be learned, and that, yes, summarizing the lessons of these things would make a great sequence of posts and that for that to happen at least someone has to get involved, and that getting involved has the potential to be of great instrumental value.

On the other hand, it is somewhat accepted that talking politics here is likely to bring down the level of the discussion, bring in folk who aren't interested in rationality, and generally is a good way to make Less Wrong more wrong.

I think this would be an excellent topic for meetups, it might be a good idea to try to bring a large LW contingent to another forum for discussing the issues, but I do think divorcing that from the main content of this site is still a good idea.

I downvoted this comment because I feel it dives too far into the specific politics of the situation, without being constructive in specific ways. That makes me think it is likely to increase the amount of mind-killing, without really raising the level of the discussion.

EDIT: I am curious why this was downvoted. I was trying to be more polite than offering a simple downvote by offering information which could be used to create more productive comments. If I haven't done that well I'd appreciate a response in kind rather than simple downvotes.

And at the risk of sounding like a James Bond villain, there are some serious options for us to take over the world here. In the sense at least that the Occupy movements' goal is lasting societal change, and they have a good deal of momentum already. If members of the rationalist community moved to help them, they might have a fair deal more. And if we introduce them to rational ways of thinking, if we inject those memes into the discussion, there's some serious opportunity here to help stop the world being so insane.

Sorry but the position of being the shadowy group secretly in control of the occupy movement is already taken.

In the sense at least that the Occupy movements' goal is lasting societal change ...

Change is anything different than now; it isn't much of a goal.

A blind monkey could see that something was wrong with trillions of dollars of bailouts and debt assumption. If you're not really identifying what that something is, I don't think you're adding much to the discussion. As it is, the one sided attack on corporate culpability for the mess, while ignoring government's hand in it, leaves me to conclude that any diagnosis they come up with will miss the mark.

The movements I think are worth looking at are the ones that create value, routing around current institutions. Basically all the open source efforts to actually make things by harnessing the cognitive surplus of an increasingly educated and connected world.

Doing is more important than squawking, as long as the regime isn't completely oppressive. The increasing maker culture, bringing technology and design to solve problems, is more transformative than politics as performance self entertainment.

And I'm not exactly strong in the ways of rationality yet, still reading and re-reading the Sequences (I keep getting lost somewhere halfway into the QM sequence,

Skip it. It's the least important of all the sequences.

It's not exactly a textbook series, but I've found the videos at khan academy http://www.khanacademy.org/#browse to be really helpful with getting the basics of a lot of things. The most advanced math it covers is calculus, which will get you a long way, and the language of the videos is always simple and straightforward.

... Guess I need to recommend it against other video series, to keep to the rules here.

I do recommend watching the stanford lecture videos http://www.youtube.com/user/StanfordUniversity?blend=1&ob=5 , but I recommend Khan over them for simplicity's sake on getting the basics. (Then watch stanford for a more complex understanding)

And though it just covers abiogenesis and evolution, cdk007 http://www.youtube.com/user/cdk007?blend=1&ob=5#p/a does have quite a bit of overlap with khan's biology section. But it's a lot more narrow than what khan covers, and pretty much is just there to counter creationists. While that's a pretty good goal, and the videos are good, it's not as good for learning in my opinion.

I think the community that I grew up in might have something that can be looked into as a sort of semi-example. I grew up in a rural town, and it had no shortage of religiosity, but most community events didn't happen at the churches. There were weekly sermons sure, but marriages, town hall meetings, debates, just about any big event would happen at our Grange hall .

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Grange_of_the_Order_of_Patrons_of_Husbandry , it's basically freemasonry for farmers)

The grange serves as sort of a meta-communal arranger of all the sub-communities of the town's religions; we have a dozen flavors of christian including catholic and jehova's witnesses, mormons, quite a few jewish people, a very few muslims, and even less atheists. But all of those groups have sub-populations belonging to the Grange, and they all get along at grange meetings fairly well. It's like it was a neutral ground, where they could all go to get things done.

Probably not a perfect example, but it's the cached thought that came to my mind as an example when i was reading this.

Welcome! 'nother Programmer here, and game maker too (I think there are a few of us here). D'you have any nice games to show?