My area is smaller than many of the cities that have a Less Wrong meetup group and I don't believe we've got any sort of rationality group in the area, so I've begun the process of trying to craft one.
My only compatriot Less Wrongian left the area a while ago, so I've pretty much got to start from scratch. So far I'm in the process of convincing members of a small, private intellectual club (read Facebook group of a select number of people from my school, not all of whom are my friends already) to participate in a rationality centered school club/ student interest group. I'm currently working on drafting the constitution and deciding on the ground rules and so on and so forth.
I'm doing a bit of personal evangelizing in order to gather some starting members. I want to start off our group with a focus on skill building, such as debating, presenting your ideas clearly, practicing epistemic hygiene, learning evolutionary psychology in a practical setting and possibly doing some Fermi calculations (for the mathematically inclined members anyway).
I'm marketing this in terms of what I perceive their personal interests to be, though this is much easier with the some than others. The politically conscious ones (especially evangelical atheists and so forth) tend to be the most on board with my ideas, so they are going to be my focus (I've got the ground rules laid to avoid making religious conflict part of the group effort to some degree, but I've left plenty of wiggle room for strong arguments, so long as they have real meat to them and transcend emotional reaction or ad hominem).
I think that I can be fairly persuasive, but I'm not always sure if I'm talking over someone's head, which can often push people away. I can usually tell if someone eats up the idea of someone knowing quite a bit more than they do about a number of subjects (i.e. when people pick up on some sort of Awesomeness Factor) which is not necessarily a good trait to have (though it often is), but I want to teach them to develop an Awesomeness Factor themselves, so that can often be a selling point.
I think its a good thing to remember that making your map match your territory (which requires rationality) benefits you no matter what your interests are. Oh and i now the feeling about talking over someones head. I attend a skeptics meeting and i seem to do that there to. I wish there where a less wrong meetup where i live so that i can talk about things like bayes theorem or and bias and have people go oh yea i know what that is.
I'm trying to meet up fortnightly with some good friends in hopes of evangelizing rationality, although I'm finding that it's my fundamentals attitudes, transparency and willingness to lead by example that truly effects people. Means I have to push myself, that I have to take this as far as it can go, and not let the hurdles slow me down. It's hard to say the least. You have to be prepared to sacrifice, and push through the negativity. But it's worth it. Rationality is my life hack.
rationality outreach?? how about starting first with one's family, our kids (in this case, my daughter) I have been thinking about this, and since I could not find any such efforts elsewhere, then decided to make up short stories on my own, from ideas on LW and tried to put these concepts to her in a manner that she would understand. 'to raise the sanity waterline" I decided to start with her.
I don't have children, and I'm pretty pessimistic about the possibility of getting my parents to identify as rationalists. (I'm currently 18)
What does it mean to 'optimize' for rationality outreach? Increasing membership or improving leadership?
There's been some talk about rationality outreach recently. And not so recently. I was just wondering:
Who has actually tried to optimize for rationality outreach?
I think Jasen did it to form the NYC group. That went well.
Are there any other cases/attempts that you know of? How did they go?