Some time ago, I stumbled over this rationality community thing, and over the last months, I read some texts of it here and there. However, I am still a bit puzzled by what the rationality community really is.
May I note that this “community” at first glance does not seem to be very inviting, if even this “about” page kind of presupposes that visitors to this page either know what the “rationality community” is, or do not need a clear explanation? (Or is this mostly meant to be read by “insiders” anyways?)
The rationality community is a bunch of people interested in similar things that hang out in the same place.
For the most part we never want to force our ideas on anyone else because that would be the classic wrong style of proselytising that no one likes. In that sense we ended up in this weird balance where we don’t try to reject anyone but we also don’t put a lot of effort into welcoming people.
There’s a philosophy that we start with ourselves. Fix ourselves then approach outwards. We got busy with our selves (not each other, but each to their own) and welcoming doesn’t happen often.
But welcome! Do stick around, we don’t bite.. We won’t often tell you how to work things out, that would be annoying to everyone. But if you want to join the journey, please. We’ll take you.
Some time ago, I stumbled over this rationality community thing, and over the last months, I read some texts of it here and there. However, I am still a bit puzzled by what the rationality community really is.
May I note that this “community” at first glance does not seem to be very inviting, if even this “about” page kind of presupposes that visitors to this page either know what the “rationality community” is, or do not need a clear explanation? (Or is this mostly meant to be read by “insiders” anyways?)
The rationality community is a bunch of people interested in similar things that hang out in the same place.
For the most part we never want to force our ideas on anyone else because that would be the classic wrong style of proselytising that no one likes. In that sense we ended up in this weird balance where we don’t try to reject anyone but we also don’t put a lot of effort into welcoming people.
There’s a philosophy that we start with ourselves. Fix ourselves then approach outwards. We got busy with our selves (not each other, but each to their own) and welcoming doesn’t happen often.
But welcome! Do stick around, we don’t bite.. We won’t often tell you how to work things out, that would be annoying to everyone. But if you want to join the journey, please. We’ll take you.
Alas, we left up the open beta ‘about’ page for too long. I have now edited it to be somewhat clearer to newcomers.
I think this is useful, even though it is old:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TNHQLZK5pHbxdnz4e/references-and-resources-for-lesswrong
And here is something else which also talks about the rationality community:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/04/the-ideology-is-not-the-movement/