Absolutely agree that we need a system. I'm trying to create a 'practical rationality meetup session', but it's hard to think of how to run it, because there isn't really a great level of systematization to the material. I'm going to study this more this weekend and let you know if I come up with any good ideas...

The people who excel at Starcraft don't do it because they follow explicit systems. They do it mostly by practice (duh) and by listening to the advice of people like Day[9].

Day9 is the best-known Starcraft II commenter, with many YouTube videos (here's a random example) and many millions of views. He occasionally does explain systems (or subsystems really) for playing, but what I think he mostly does right is that

• he entertains and engages his audience really well,
• he evidently knows what he's talking about,
• he is relentlessly positive and has a good video about that,
• he exudes total confidence that luck has almost nothing to do with your results,
• he can talk way better than anyone I've ever heard talk about rationality and
• he is easy to like, and easy to want to be like.

I may be missing something, but I think this is most of what he does so right about teaching what he teaches. Anyway, my point is clear: We don't need systems, we need a Day[9] of rationality.

AIs may need systems. We aren't AIs.

Absolutely agree that we need a system. I'm trying to create a 'practical rationality meetup session', but it's hard to think of how to run it, because there isn't really a great level of systematization to the material. I'm going to study this more this weekend and let you know if I come up with any good ideas...

Well-educated atheist American white men in their mid 20s with no children who work with computers.

"The new thing for people who would have been Randian Objectivists 30 years ago."

The demographics are essentially the same except LW is probably more than 2:1 politically left vs. right. Objectivists are probably more than 2:1 in the other direction.

Since when did people like us decide it is OK to be liberal/socialist?

I've multiple times seen the recommendation to use upvotes / downvotes as a method to express a sentiment of "I'd like to see more / less of this kind of post." It seems obvious that the people expressing such an opinion expect the recipients of the votes to care about them. It seems similarly obvious that the developers and admins of the site expect people to care about their karma at least somewhat, otherwise why have it be visible? It also seems like an entirely predictable human reaction to care about what others think of you and your actions, and karma is an expression of that.

So, I suspect that you are in a minority in not caring, and I suspect you actually do care at least a little bit. Claiming not to strikes me as more signaling of social status than anything else. I am not at all surprised that it coincides with you having high karma, nor am I surprised that newbies find the karma system more intimidating than people with lots of karma.

What did you hope to accomplish with this post? How does adding an insult about the quality of mwengler's posts help that aim? I'm trying to come up with a charitable interpretation of your comment, but I'm not having much luck.

I agree and wish to chime in that the current system absolutely stops me from stating what I think is reasonable and reasoned disagreement, and even stops me from asking questions. The stackoverflow.com site does NOT have this effect, at least not on me, and I think it is because downvotes cost the downvoter karma there (upvotes are free). So dowvnvotes are reserved for things that are really wrong, best deleted, and a post with a few upvotes will almost always rise to be net upvoted because haters get charged karma to counter upvotes.

upvoted mainly for some of the cool links you included...

Do sign up for our mailing list if you haven't: https://groups.google.com/group/atlanta-less-wrong-meetup-group

Yes, I agree 1000%. It's expensive in this world for one to find significant time to simply think, and it seems to be very rare these days, but that's probably the most important thing in making revolutionary advances. I assume this very site is the result of someone having much time to simply think freely.

Of course you should also mention the flip side dangers of rationalism, how you actually have to walk the streets to draw an accurate map, you can't just sit in a room with your eyes closed, and so on. But there's a great point to be made here that is usually understated.