You need to be more specific than “rationalists” about the target group.
Who should be reading LessWrong?
everyone in the world?
those who do or might self-identify as “rationalist” if given the opportunity?
the typical moderately bright? <-- I’m around here
those of searing IQ only, thanks?
In that case, the question is: “what’s it for?”
Who is this aimed at? Who does this need to be useful for?
I understand the blog was founded to recruit more rationalists who would then advance the aims of SIAI. What’s the program in detail? Is it in any way organised, or do you just sort of hope people will drift in that direction? To what extent is the stated mission (“refining the art of human rationality”) not necessarily aligned with that?
I wrote the above off the top of my head. I haven’t found a list of questions like this anywhere on the site as yet. If there isn’t one, and the above is actually the best available, that would be most disappointing …
There has been discussion of this previously, but very little. The comments on the mathoverflow post indicate that there isn’t much consensus about the target audience. I haven’t reread them all very carefully though, perhaps there is some more tangible result there that I missed.
I’ve also talked with at least one person about the subject at the meetups and we disagreed and didn’t really resolve our disagreement.
So I agree with you that the question of “who should be on Less Wrong” is an open question, and it is a question which really should be addressed.
You need to be more specific than “rationalists” about the target group.
Who should be reading LessWrong?
everyone in the world?
those who do or might self-identify as “rationalist” if given the opportunity?
the typical moderately bright? <-- I’m around here
those of searing IQ only, thanks?
In that case, the question is: “what’s it for?”
Who is this aimed at? Who does this need to be useful for?
I understand the blog was founded to recruit more rationalists who would then advance the aims of SIAI. What’s the program in detail? Is it in any way organised, or do you just sort of hope people will drift in that direction? To what extent is the stated mission (“refining the art of human rationality”) not necessarily aligned with that?
I wrote the above off the top of my head. I haven’t found a list of questions like this anywhere on the site as yet. If there isn’t one, and the above is actually the best available, that would be most disappointing …
There has been discussion of this previously, but very little. The comments on the mathoverflow post indicate that there isn’t much consensus about the target audience. I haven’t reread them all very carefully though, perhaps there is some more tangible result there that I missed.
I’ve also talked with at least one person about the subject at the meetups and we disagreed and didn’t really resolve our disagreement.
So I agree with you that the question of “who should be on Less Wrong” is an open question, and it is a question which really should be addressed.