This idea isn't totally developed, so I'm putting it in Discussion for now.
Introduction:
A few hands have been wrung over how to quickly explain fundamental Less Wrong ideas to people, in a way that they can be approached, appraised, an considered rather than being isolated and bereft across an inferential gulf.
I'm pretty embarrassed to say that I hardly talk about these things with people in my everyday life, even though it makes up a major part of my worldview and outlook. I don't particularly care about making people have similar beliefs to me, but I feel like I'm doing my friends a disservice to not adequately explain these things that I've found so personally helpful. (Ugh, that sounds pseudo-religious. Cut me off here if this is a Bad idea.)
Would it be useful to start a project (read: group of posts by different people) to find ways to bridge said gaps in normal conversation? (Normal conversation meaning talking to a non-hostile audience that nonetheless isn't particularly interested in to LW ideas). Mainly to talk about rationality things with friends and family members and whatnot, and possibly to help raise the sanity waterline (though this wasn't designed to do that).
A problem with the sequences for a nonplussed audience is that it assumes they care. I find that when trying to explain ideas like holding off on proposing solutions until talking about the problem to other people it just comes across as boring, even if they aren't opposed to the idea at all.
With an ideological audience, the problem is much more difficult. Not only do you need to explain why something is correct, you need to convince them that believing in it is more important than holding on to their ideology, and that they should lower their "defenses" enough to actually consider it.
I think that, should this project be undertaken, it should be very tested and experimental based. Like, people would actually try out the techniques on other people to see if they actually work.
Background/Thoughts/Questions:
Do we actually want to do this? It seems like its a step towards a possibly PR-damaging evangelism, or just being generally annoying in conversation, among other things. On the other hand, I still want to be able to talk about these things offline every now and then.
It's been said that being half a rationalist is dangerous. How do you communicate enough rationality for it to not be dangerous? Or would they have to go all in, and make the casual conversation about it semi-pointless?
The inferential gaps that need crossing probably vary a lot by personal background. Once I was able to explain basic transhumanism (death is bad, we can probably enhance ourselves using technology) to someone, and have them agree with an like it almost immediately. Another time, the other person in the conversation just found it gross.
There are probably ways of explaining LW concepts to other people that rely on their ideas that would mess up their thinking (i.e. Cognitive Bias explained through Original Sin might be a bad idea). How do you cross into rational ideas from nonrational ones? Should you try to exclusively explain rational ideas based on rational beliefs they already have? Could you reliably explain an idea to someone and expect that to cause them to question what you explained it in terms of (i.e. you explain A in terms of B, but A causes people to reject B)?
For talking to an ideological person, I think that the main common goal should be to convince them that a) ideas can be objectively true, b) its good to abandon false beliefs, c) ideological people will rationalize things to fit into their ideology, and "view arguments as soldiers".
The "holding off on proposing solutions" example made me imagine a scenario:
You're going to a meeting to address some problem x, and you have enough authority so that you can say something at the start and have people listen to you. So you say "To start off, can we take a minute just to talk about problem x, and not about what to do about x? I just want to be sure that we're all clear about what the problem is before we get caught up in a discussion of particular solutions to it." Then hopefully the meeting goes well - the group holds off on proposing solutions and eventually comes to a good solution.
And that's it, for the time. You've given people a taste of rationality that you can build on. They didn't care about rationality, they cared about problem x, but you showed them that a certain way of thinking and doing things helped them deal with problem x.
You can build on that. For instance, maybe after the meeting you're talking with someone who was there about the fact that the meeting went well, and you could give them a little more detail about what you did: "Once people start talking about possible solutions, they get locked into their first suggestions and they have trouble thinking about the problem creatively and coming up with other solutions." Or maybe there will be another meeting where you suggest holding off on proposing solutions, and you could say a little something more about it then. After a couple more cases where one of your rationality tools has been useful, people may notice a pattern and comment on it, and you could say something more general about rationality, like "There's actually a whole field of study that looks at people's thinking, trying to figure out what people can do to come up with good ideas and avoid making mistakes. I've just read a little bit about what they've found and picked up a few tricks." If you find someone who is interested and asks you questions, then you could go into more detail and give them a more thorough explanation of some rationality topic, or explain some of the fundamentals of rationality, or refer them to this blog.
The general principles from this example: Bring up rationality topics when they're relevant. Be brief. Keep the focus mostly on the issue that people actually care about, not on the meta-level of rationality. Show that rationality works (helps people do things they care about). Don't worry if your explanation is very limited or imperfect. You can build your message over time, through multiple conversations which incorporate bits of rationality. You can have a more in depth conversation about rationality if someone becomes interested enough.
I think this is very good. Use whatever techniques and modes of argument appear to work, allowing only a glimpse of the whole LW background. Then let them come to you.