Core to this strategy is taking offense at being called a cult while assimilating into the broader culture in ways that do not sacrifice your core values but are crucial issues for others.
I like this summary!
Just a quick idea, I think a nice way to contact the outside culture without compromising on anything could be to organize public lectures or workshops. Kinda like the existing workshops for the mathematically gifted kids or wannabe bloggers, only they should be short (like, one afternoon) and instead of inviting people to our “walled compound” they should be on a neutral territory that feels safe (maybe even offer to organize the workshop in a local school). Possible topics: mathematics, statistics, computer science, learning in general, critical thinking, blogging. Too bad I am not in America, I would quite enjoy doing something like that, and I am not doing anything important that this would distract me from. This could help create public perception of our community as “harmless nerds”.
Ironically, one thing that might help would be to somehow make the membership explicit. Without explicit membership, you cannot exclude people (such as Zizians or SBF), so people can argue that they belong to us, and there is no way to prove the opposite. Mormons can say “this is not one of us” when he is not, and they can kick someone problematic out when he is. Or maybe rationality is too nebulous word, so we could instead talk about e.g. “Less Wrong community membership”. It’s like the orthogonality thesis: whether someone is good at Bayesian updating, and whether someone is a decent person, are two independent things—we should try to find the people in the intersection.
I wonder (but this would be a longer debate) if we could have some kind of “web of trust”, where individual rationalists could specify how much they trust someone to be a nice and reasonable person; the system would calculate the score in some way, and you need to exceed some threshold to be accepted. If you turn out to be a scammer or a serial killer, everyone who vouched for you would be punished in some way (lose their right to vouch for someone, get a penalty on their own score). No idea how specifically should the math work here.
These are good ideas. I like the idea of offering tutoring or classes as a way to engage a broader community. I also think having formal orgs that interface with media and have official leaders who speak on behalf of their membership seems like a good idea. However, to work, I think these orgs are going to have to officially put the brakes on some of the divergent lifestyle choices of membership and on some of the more radical statements by rationalist figures, and it may not be compatible with the culture of rationalists to submit to constraining, assimilative norms in that way.
The web of trust is also something I’ve wanted for the world of science. The way I picture it is that you need a way to subscribe to other people or organizations whose judgments you trust. Each participant can privately rate their trust level in other participants. The trust level they observe reflects the aggregate trust levels of the participants they subscribe to. Would love to see such a technology.
I like this summary!
Just a quick idea, I think a nice way to contact the outside culture without compromising on anything could be to organize public lectures or workshops. Kinda like the existing workshops for the mathematically gifted kids or wannabe bloggers, only they should be short (like, one afternoon) and instead of inviting people to our “walled compound” they should be on a neutral territory that feels safe (maybe even offer to organize the workshop in a local school). Possible topics: mathematics, statistics, computer science, learning in general, critical thinking, blogging. Too bad I am not in America, I would quite enjoy doing something like that, and I am not doing anything important that this would distract me from. This could help create public perception of our community as “harmless nerds”.
Ironically, one thing that might help would be to somehow make the membership explicit. Without explicit membership, you cannot exclude people (such as Zizians or SBF), so people can argue that they belong to us, and there is no way to prove the opposite. Mormons can say “this is not one of us” when he is not, and they can kick someone problematic out when he is. Or maybe rationality is too nebulous word, so we could instead talk about e.g. “Less Wrong community membership”. It’s like the orthogonality thesis: whether someone is good at Bayesian updating, and whether someone is a decent person, are two independent things—we should try to find the people in the intersection.
I wonder (but this would be a longer debate) if we could have some kind of “web of trust”, where individual rationalists could specify how much they trust someone to be a nice and reasonable person; the system would calculate the score in some way, and you need to exceed some threshold to be accepted. If you turn out to be a scammer or a serial killer, everyone who vouched for you would be punished in some way (lose their right to vouch for someone, get a penalty on their own score). No idea how specifically should the math work here.
These are good ideas. I like the idea of offering tutoring or classes as a way to engage a broader community. I also think having formal orgs that interface with media and have official leaders who speak on behalf of their membership seems like a good idea. However, to work, I think these orgs are going to have to officially put the brakes on some of the divergent lifestyle choices of membership and on some of the more radical statements by rationalist figures, and it may not be compatible with the culture of rationalists to submit to constraining, assimilative norms in that way.
The web of trust is also something I’ve wanted for the world of science. The way I picture it is that you need a way to subscribe to other people or organizations whose judgments you trust. Each participant can privately rate their trust level in other participants. The trust level they observe reflects the aggregate trust levels of the participants they subscribe to. Would love to see such a technology.