I just want to say — lest Raemon, other ritual-type-event-organizers, or people who share their values and views on this subject, get the wrong idea — that we should distinguish between these two positions:
“Rituals make Less Wrong look like a cult, or otherwise make the LW community look sketchy/disreputable/creepy” (optional addendum: ”… and because of this, I don’t want to associate with LW”)
“I don’t like rituals, am personally creeped out by them, and wish LW communities wouldn’t engage in them” (optional addendum: ”… and because of this, I don’t want to participate in LW communities”)
I, personally, am not concerned about LW’s image, or my image if I associate with LW, and I make no comment about the strategic implications (for e.g. CFAR) of LW communities engaging in rituals; I just want to head off any conclusion or assertion that the only reason anyone would object to rituals is a concern about appearances, reputation, or the like.
(This, I think, is a special case of “well, people don’t like X because they don’t understand X” — “no, I understand X just fine and I still don’t like it”. Relatedly: “We shouldn’t do X because people might draw the wrong conclusions about us” — “Well, let’s do X and just not tell anyone” — “Actually, I think we shouldn’t do X for reasons that have nothing to do with other people’s opinions of us for doing X!”)
I second this. I think it’s kind of bad for LW’s image to be associated with cult-like stuff, but I don’t think it matters that much. But it would be really bad for ME if LW became really about ritual.
It really does; already there were some unfortunate occurrences when I tried to initiate new acolytes, ahem, I mean when prodding some friends across the inferential chasm.
I just want to say — lest Raemon, other ritual-type-event-organizers, or people who share their values and views on this subject, get the wrong idea — that we should distinguish between these two positions:
“Rituals make Less Wrong look like a cult, or otherwise make the LW community look sketchy/disreputable/creepy” (optional addendum: ”… and because of this, I don’t want to associate with LW”)
“I don’t like rituals, am personally creeped out by them, and wish LW communities wouldn’t engage in them” (optional addendum: ”… and because of this, I don’t want to participate in LW communities”)
I, personally, am not concerned about LW’s image, or my image if I associate with LW, and I make no comment about the strategic implications (for e.g. CFAR) of LW communities engaging in rituals; I just want to head off any conclusion or assertion that the only reason anyone would object to rituals is a concern about appearances, reputation, or the like.
(This, I think, is a special case of “well, people don’t like X because they don’t understand X” — “no, I understand X just fine and I still don’t like it”. Relatedly: “We shouldn’t do X because people might draw the wrong conclusions about us” — “Well, let’s do X and just not tell anyone” — “Actually, I think we shouldn’t do X for reasons that have nothing to do with other people’s opinions of us for doing X!”)
I second this. I think it’s kind of bad for LW’s image to be associated with cult-like stuff, but I don’t think it matters that much. But it would be really bad for ME if LW became really about ritual.
It really does; already there were some unfortunate occurrences when I tried to initiate new acolytes, ahem, I mean when prodding some friends across the inferential chasm.
(edit: Answered Raemon per PM)
I would like to hear more about that.
BTW, there’s inferential distances, and there’s fuzzy-inferential distances, the latter being rationalization distances past some length.
I’m saying I don’t think it matters much if it scares away random people.