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The results of this could be made into a LessWrong sucess stories post, which might then be used for outreach e.g. in handouts or as part of the meetup manual - if the commenters agree to that.
Open Thread, May 12 - 18, 2014
You know the drill - If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Notes for future OT posters:
1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.
2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one.
3. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
4. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.
In response to
LessWrong as social catalyst
Yeah, I'd second that. Someone could make a Google survey form, or comment thread poll, asking which users commenting here would be open to having their success stories published in some capacity, whether here on the blog, or a more widely shared piece of literature.
In response to
LessWrong as social catalyst
At first I saw this and I was like "meh". But now, looking back, I feel like I could not be more thrilled with how much of a social catalyst LW has been for me.
In ascending order of importance...
...After writing "A Critique of Leverage Research's Connection Theory", Geoff Anders reached out to Skype with me. It was cool to meet him, and this eventually turned into me stopping by Leverage House for a day. Not much came out of that, but it was cool.
...After cross-posting "Why Don't People Help Others More?" on LW, I was reached out via PM by Giving What We Can. They had started a new blog and wanted to know if I'd be a volunteer writer. I said yes. Based on large part by this remote volunteering, I received a summer internship with them, where I met numerous important contacts in my life. This all started from one post on LW.
...After cross-posting "Initial Thoughts on Personally Finding a High-Impact Career", I received a lot of useful advice. But I also received a PM from a user who offered to mentor me in learning programming. Later on, through his help and advice, I've received a job in his company that I will start this summer after graduating. I went from unexperienced programmer to job-haver all because of him, and, by extension, LW. I'd very likely be working in a worse career if not for LW.
Mr. Hurford, I know you're a prominent writer within the effective altruist community, among other things (e.g., producing software, and open-source web, products, through running .impact). As someone who initially encountered effective altruism, and then Less Wrong, do you have a perspective on how, or how much, Less Wrong has amplified the success of effective altruism as a social movement within the last couple of years?
In response to
LessWrong as social catalyst
Everyone's posting evidence for this, which is great and LW is awesome, but I'm also interested in any rebuttals of the sort like "I expected it to hugely change my social life but it didn't really"
In particular, for me:
- I found out about CFAR from LW and attended a CFAR workshop
- I've attended a couple of meetups in the bay area
- I found out about 80000 hours, GiveWell, MIRI, and effective altruism in general, which has been a large force in my life
- I've met many interesting people working on many interesting things in spheres that I care about
Declaring pseudo-Crocker's rules...
Not soon after I found out about LW, I expected to e.g move into a rationalist community, immerse myself in the memespace, etc. But there's a distinct qualitative difference that I feel when I'm hanging out with my friends whom I've met from other more prosaic circles (house parties, friends of friends, college, etc) than when I'm hanging out with people at the meetups I've been to and even the CFAR workshop. I find it hard to really connect with most people I've met through LW in a way that gives me the fuzzywuzzies, even though many of us share similar values and are working towards similar goals.
Yes, my friends are stoners, entrepreneurs, weirdos, normals, hot people, people-probably-more-concerned-social-status-than-LWers, whatever. Some of them know about LW and are familiar with rationality concepts. But I just have a really fun time with them, and I haven't had that in my experiences so far with LW people. I suspect (at the risk of sounding insulting) that there's a difference in social acumen and sense of humor or something. I honestly found some of my social experiences with LWers kind of alienating.
Please note I'm not drawing a hard and fast line here, (and obviously there's a selection effect) but I'm just curious if anyone else has had the same experience.
I'm curious if there is any other variables that might account for you not achieving what you hoped you might by connecting through Less Wrong. For example, many regular attendees of the Vancouver meetup have wanted to get great jobs, move into a house with their rationalist friends, or move to the Bay Area to be part of the central party. However, they haven't done much of this yet, despite having wanted to with other local rationalists for a couple of years. The fact that most of us are university students, or have only recently launched our careers, throws a wrench into ambitious plans to utterly change our own lives because the effort my friends might have directed towards that is already taken up by their need to adapt to regular responsibilities of fully-fledged adulthood. On our part, I figure the planning fallacy, and overconfidence, caused us to significantly overestimate what we would really achieve as members of a burgeoning social subculture, or whatever.
In response to
May Monthly Bragging Thread
I bought a pedometer to track my steps, so I could achieve my goal of taking 10000 steps everyday, and have a motivation to go outside, and do some light exercise. This is from before I bought the pedometer when I was doing no regular exercise. I've met my goal of 10000 steps everyday for the last week since I bought the pedometer, so I've increased my goal to 12000 steps everyday.
I figured upvotes in the monthly bragging thread would solely be a function of how much of a heap of utility can be demonstrated to be achieved. However, this is my second-most upvoted comment of all time, with the first-most upvoted being similar: a terse comment with just enough data to make it seem substantial, but is full of warm fuzzies. So, writing 'Yay! I'm winning!' for a mundane goal, like doing minimal exercise, might be at least as powerful as providing a long, and modest, explanation for doing something which signals much more greatness in real life. Below mine, other users have commented that they've:
*cemented an academic career with a lifestyle they love. *gave a technical presentation to hundreds of people. *became adequately competent in Python to start a fully-fledged web project. *made substantial advancement in launching a career as a statistician. *made a regular habit of building skills that are more crucial to success than 'walking around'.
To me, all of the above seems more impressive than my 'walking around a bunch'. My hypothesis is that I signaled my success in a simpler package, so it was easier to process, and so there was an easier, and lazier, investment in pressing the 'upvote' button. If you upvoted me, why? What's going on?
In response to
May Monthly Bragging Thread
I bought a pedometer to track my steps, so I could achieve my goal of taking 10000 steps everyday, and have a motivation to go outside, and do some light exercise. This is from before I bought the pedometer when I was doing no regular exercise. I've met my goal of 10000 steps everyday for the last week since I bought the pedometer, so I've increased my goal to 12000 steps everyday.
In response to
LessWrong as social catalyst
Location: Vancouver, Canada
I was introduced to Less Wrong by a long-time friend who had been reading the website for about a year before I first visited it. Over time, I've generally become more integrated with the community. Now, a handful of my closest friends are ones I've met through the local meetup. Also, with related communities, the meetup does a lot to give presentations between people, and facilitate skill-sharing, and knowledge bases.
I know that several of my fellow meetup attendees also made great friends through the meetup. There has been at list one instance of two of them becoming roommates, and now a few of my friends are trying to put together a 'rationalist house' this summer.
For those not in the know, a 'rationalist house' is a group home based around intentional meatspace communities that have risen around this website, so as to create a better living environment where new domestic norms can be tried. There are several in the Bay Area, at least one in Melbourne, probably one in New York(?), etc...
The founder of our meetup, who doesn't visit this website much anymore, but is generally in contact with the meetup otherwise, made connections with a successful financial manager who more-or-less became a mentor for him. Based upon the mentor's advice, this friend of mine is now trying to launch his own software company.
Several of us from the meetup have attended a CFAR workshop, including myself, and my friend who introduced me to Less Wrong has done continually ongoing volunteer work for them for the last year. As a result, we've become friends, and acquaintances, of much of the rationalist community in San Francisco. Additionally, a few of my friends have been spurred involvement with other organizations based in the Bay Area (e.g., YCombinator, the MIRI, Landmark). He also started an ongoing swing dancing community in Berkeley while he lived there, because memes.
Less Wrong introduced my friends, and I, to the effective altruism community, which infected a few of us with new memes for doing good, spurring at least one of us so far to have donated several thousand dollars to organizations, and projects, like the global prioritization research currently being jointly executed by the Future of Humanity Institute, and the Centre for Effective Altruism.
For the sake of their privacy, I'm not posting the names of these individuals, or their contact information, directly here on the public Internet, but if you'd like to get in touch with them to ask further questions, send me a private message, and I can put you in touch with them.
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comment
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on
Evaluating GiveWell as a startup idea based on Paul Graham's philosophy
'Getting lucky', that is, implying that the entrepreneurs in question might not be such paragons of practical rationality after all.
You can do everything "right' and still fail. On the other hand if you build a startup and make dumb decisions your startup will likely fail.
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comment
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on
Evaluating GiveWell as a startup idea based on Paul Graham's philosophy
I agree with you, so I've edited my comment a bit to account for your nitpick. See above. Thanks for making the point.
Is this a joke? I can't tell.
Yes, it's a joke.
Note: edited for grammar.
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Yes, I compensate for that by realizing that the people answering this are a small fraction of LW users.
It's a weird phenomenon, because even those lurkers with accounts who barely contribute might not state how they've not socially benefited from Less Wrong. However, I suspect the majority of people who mostly read Less Wrong, and are passive to insert themselves deeper into the community are the sorts of people who are also less likely to find social benefit from it. I mean, from my own experience, that of my friends, and the others commenting here, they took initiative upon themselves to at least , e.g., attend a meatspace Less Wrong meetup. This is more likely to lead to social benefit than Less Wrong spontaneously improving the lives of more passive users who don't make their presence known. If one is unknown, that person won't make the social connections which will lead to fruition.