So we are basically searching for the crude number of people who would join the LW community as it is right now if they where exposed to it?
Yes, that’s a much better way to put it. Although I clarify my intended goal a bit more below.
I recommend you check out the threads about LW demographics
My analysis has been heavily influenced by data from Yvain’s survey… especially where it matches up with intuition. Atheism (or at least agnosticism) seems to be one of the strongest defining traits of this community (shared by 93.3%). We would expect that.
Perhaps the “crude number of people” I’m looking for is the number of people who would enjoy devoting their time to reading the sequences(for purposes other than to troll them) if they were introduced to them in the right way. I’m assuming that to enjoy the sequences, people would need to be smart enough to mostly understand them and at least be predisposed to caring about having correct beliefs… which unfortunately disqualifies almost everyone. They would also need some free time… and they would have to want to spend that free time reading… which probably disqualifies almost everyone else and reduces the target audience to around the current size of LW. :/ (As an aside, part of my working theory of why this community is so akrasia-filled is that the only people who have the time to read and digest something as long as the LW sequences are people with motivation systems so severely crippled that they prevent their owners from filling their time with things that most people without akrasia have like steady jobs, lovers, and rewarding social interactions. Think about it. Most Americans or other English speakers who have tendencies towards basic rationality (read: our entire target audience) and a somewhat functional motivation system in this world win so hard at life that they quickly become wayyyy too busy to allocate any of their precious time to boring, anti-social & low-prestige* tasks like reading online forums.)
Anyway, my personal theories on LW aside, my goal here is to build more rationalists and stronger rationalists. I assume a number of those people who read the sequences would be “involved in the LW community as it is right now” as well but that’s sort of a secondary consideration in my mind. As I’ve pointed out before, 96% of LW participants are lurkers who only read. So my main goal is to expose interested parties to the sequences and it is my expectation that 3-4% of those folks will naturally stick around and become more involved after that.
the number of nominally religious LW posters learing to be less wrong may indeed be nontrivial
I guess strong to moderately strong theists aren’t really in my imagined Less Wrong target audience. Despite a few extraordinary counter-examples, LessWrong isn’t really equipped or devoted to the matter of personal de-conversion. And I don’t think it’s going too far to suggest that being an atheist is pretty much a pre-req to being rational. It’s the canonical example of rationality for a reason.
Yes, that’s a much better way to put it. Although I clarify my intended goal a bit more below.
My analysis has been heavily influenced by data from Yvain’s survey… especially where it matches up with intuition. Atheism (or at least agnosticism) seems to be one of the strongest defining traits of this community (shared by 93.3%). We would expect that.
Perhaps the “crude number of people” I’m looking for is the number of people who would enjoy devoting their time to reading the sequences (for purposes other than to troll them) if they were introduced to them in the right way. I’m assuming that to enjoy the sequences, people would need to be smart enough to mostly understand them and at least be predisposed to caring about having correct beliefs… which unfortunately disqualifies almost everyone. They would also need some free time… and they would have to want to spend that free time reading… which probably disqualifies almost everyone else and reduces the target audience to around the current size of LW. :/ (As an aside, part of my working theory of why this community is so akrasia-filled is that the only people who have the time to read and digest something as long as the LW sequences are people with motivation systems so severely crippled that they prevent their owners from filling their time with things that most people without akrasia have like steady jobs, lovers, and rewarding social interactions. Think about it. Most Americans or other English speakers who have tendencies towards basic rationality (read: our entire target audience) and a somewhat functional motivation system in this world win so hard at life that they quickly become wayyyy too busy to allocate any of their precious time to boring, anti-social & low-prestige* tasks like reading online forums.)
Anyway, my personal theories on LW aside, my goal here is to build more rationalists and stronger rationalists. I assume a number of those people who read the sequences would be “involved in the LW community as it is right now” as well but that’s sort of a secondary consideration in my mind. As I’ve pointed out before, 96% of LW participants are lurkers who only read. So my main goal is to expose interested parties to the sequences and it is my expectation that 3-4% of those folks will naturally stick around and become more involved after that.
I guess strong to moderately strong theists aren’t really in my imagined Less Wrong target audience. Despite a few extraordinary counter-examples, LessWrong isn’t really equipped or devoted to the matter of personal de-conversion. And I don’t think it’s going too far to suggest that being an atheist is pretty much a pre-req to being rational. It’s the canonical example of rationality for a reason.