and I see almost no development of the ideas of how it actually works
OK—fair point. I haven’t yet addressed how I see the organization being run, as I was planning on waiting until I had some people to organize—I can see now how that thinking was in error. I’ll address it soon.
Or because making people identify as rationalists isn’t the best marginal use of our time
No—making people identify as rationalists is not a good marginal use of time. I want to make people behave as rationalists.
To address your point: learning rationality is a big investment for people, and for most people I believe there are low hanging fruit (i.e. just think about this one thing in this particular way, and you’ll be a lot more effective). In other words, I want to expose people to rationality as a set of tricks for getting what they want, rather than a grand overarching ideology.
This approach may not work though. We may be able to achieve better results by working largely within rationalist subculture. But I think we need to try and find out.
OK—fair point. I haven’t yet addressed how I see the organization being run, as I was planning on waiting until I had some people to organize—I can see now how that thinking was in error. I’ll address it soon.
No—making people identify as rationalists is not a good marginal use of time. I want to make people behave as rationalists.
To address your point: learning rationality is a big investment for people, and for most people I believe there are low hanging fruit (i.e. just think about this one thing in this particular way, and you’ll be a lot more effective). In other words, I want to expose people to rationality as a set of tricks for getting what they want, rather than a grand overarching ideology.
This approach may not work though. We may be able to achieve better results by working largely within rationalist subculture. But I think we need to try and find out.