Can you point out your 3-5 favorite books/frameworks?
Thanks Lumifer. The Prince is worth reading. However, tranferring his insights regarding princedoms to how to design and spread memeplexes in the 21st century does have its limits. Any more suggestions?
Can somebody point out text books or other sources that lead to an increased understanding of how to influence more than one person (the books I know address only 1:1, or presentations)? There are books on how to run successful businesses, etc, but is there overarching knowledge that includes successful states, parties, NGOs, religions, other social groups (would also be of interest for how to best spread rationality...). In the Yvain framework: given the Moloch as a taken, what are good resources that describe how to optimally influence the Moloch with many self-interested agents and for example its inherent game-theoretic problems as long as AI is not up to the task?
Heed the typical mind fallacy. Other people are not you. What you find interesting is not necessarily what others find interesting. Your dilemmas or existential issues are not their dilemmas or existential issues. For example, I don't find the question of "shall we enforce a police state" interesting. The answer is "No", case closed, we're done. Notice that I'm speaking about myself -- you, being a different person, might well be highly interested in extended discussion of the topic.
I strongly disagree and think it is unrelated to th...
I conclude from the discussion that the term "rich" is too vague. The following is mine: I should be surprised to find many LWers who don't find themselves in the top percentage of the Global Richlist and who could not afford cryonics if they made it their lives' goal.
I meant especially in individual members such as described in the point "priorities." Somewhat along the lines that topics in LW are not a representative sample concerning which topics and conclusions are relevant to the individual. In other words: The imaginary guide I write for my children "how to be rational" very much differs from the guide that LW is providing.
Definitely. I am slightly irritated that I missed that. The line spacing and paragraph spacing still seems a bit off compared to other articles. Is there anything I am doing wrong?
They are, but I still would not wear them. (And no rings for men unless you are married or have been a champion in basketball or wrestling.)
Let's differentiate two cases in whom we may want to address: 1) Aspiring rationalists: That's the easy case. Take an awesome shirt, sneak in "LW" or "pi" somewhere, and try to fly below the radar of anybody who would not like it. A moebius strip might do the same, a drawing of a cat in a box may work but also be misunderstood. 2) The not-yet aspiring rationalist: I assume, this is the main target g...
Fair Enough. Maybe I should take Elon Musk out, he has in WBW found a way to push the value of advertising beyond his the cost of his time spent. If Zuckerberg posts to, I will be fully falsified. To compensate, I introduce typical person X whose personal cost-benefit analysis from posting an article is negative. I still argue that this is the standard.
I think you're missing the broader point I was making: writing your own articles is like changing the oil in your own car. It's what you do when you are poor, unimportant, have low value of time, or it's your hobby.
Once you become important, you start outsourcing work to research assistants, personal assistants, secretaries, PR employees, vice presidents, grad students, etc. Musk is a billionaire and a very busy one at that and doesn't write his own books because it makes more sense for him to bring in someone like WBW to talk to for a few hours and have h...
I do not think that there exists a perfect rational world. My next article will emphasize that. I do think that there is a rational attire which is on average more consistent than the average one presented on LW and one should strive for it. I did not get the point of your presupposition though it seems obvious to you, LWers are not more rational?
I am not sure of the point here. I read it as "I can imagine a perfect world and LW is not it". Well, duh.
No. I think all the points indicate that a perfect world is difficult to achieve as rationalist forums are in part self-defeating (maybe not impossible though, most also would not have expected for Wikipedia to work out as well as it does). At the moment, Less Wrong may be the worst form of forum, except for all the others. My point in other words: I was fascinated by LW and thought it possible to make great leaps towards some form of trut...
I do agree. The point was originally "selfishness or effort" which would have avoided the misunderstanding. I think for Musk, the competitive aspect is definitely less important than the effort aspect (he is surely one of those persons for whom "the value of time approaches infinity"). However, I doubt that Musk would give away patents if he didn't see an advantage in doing that.
Thanks. It is now online in the discussion section: "The Market for Lemons."
As soon as I have two Karma points, I will post a 2000 word article on bias in most LW posts (which I would love to have your feedback on) with probably more to follow. However, I don't want to search for some more random rationality quotes to meet that requirement. Note to the administrators: Either you are doing a fabulous job at preventing multiple accounts or registration is currently not working (tried multiple devices, email addresses, and other measures).
Jane Goodall has some interesting oberservations regarding infanticide among chimpanzees in her book "Through a Window." While chimpanzees will attack females that are strangers to a group violently, their infants will only, and in rare instances, die as casualties, but not be directly attacked. Infanticide within a community has only been observed in a few cases and all perpetrated by the same female individual and her daughter. However, she concluded from their behavior that their reason lay solely in the meat of the hunted infants.
The Hollywood version of that is quite popular, sounds less rational though.
Losers always whine about their best, winners go home and f* the prom queen. --Sean Connery, The Rock
LW does seem dying and mainly useful for its old content. Any suggestions for a LW 2.0?
I've been thinking about this for a few months. I'm pointing this out to commit to writing a main-level article by December 1st, hopefully earlier.
Yvain, #2 in all-time LW karma, has his own blog which is pretty great. The community has basically moved there and actually grown substantially... Yvain's posts regularly get over 1000 comments. (There's also Eliezer Yudkowsky's facebook feed and the tumblr community.) Turns out online communities are hard, and without a dedicated community leader to tweak site mechanics and provide direction, you are best off just taking a single top contributor and telling them to write whatever they want. Most subreddits fail through Eternal September; Less Wrong i...
You should. Just started playing with those gums.
That may be the case. But even Lukeprog preferred to be given feedback in a nice wrapping, because after all we are still primates and will appreciate it more.
Somehow in this context the notion of "picking the low-hanging fruit" keeps coming up. This is prejudgmental and one would have a hard time disagreeing with such an action. Intentional Insights marketing is also discussed on Facebook. I definitely second the thence stated opinion that the suggested T-Shirts and rings are counterproductive and, honestly, ridiculous. Judging the articles is seems more difficult. If the monthly newsletter generates significant readership, this might be useful in the future. However, LW and Rationality FB groups already have their fair share of borderline self-help questions. I would not choose to further push in this direction.
A poor person comes to LW and wants to post a laborious article. LW judges them a high risk, and either declines to post the article or offers it at a high rate of 2 Karma points. PS: Sorry to misuse your comment; it was the most recent one. ;)
Did anything come from this? Would love to see that, too!