Thanks for reaching out! As a LW lurker, I’ve felt a bit of unease when I first heard about Intentional Insights or read the one HuffPo article, and it’s taken me a while to discern where that unease came from.
One natural interpretation is that I’m not as comfortable with emotional appeals, and since that’s expressly what you aim to give, it’s going to rub someone like me the wrong way. If that’s the case, InIn’s community will just be a different subset of the population, probably bigger like you hope, and we should accept that.
A more concerning interpretation would assert that the style of LW content is also a big part of its identity, encouraging for instance long and deep reflection and high-quality discussion about difficult topics rather than instant-gratification social media responses. My own mindset while reading LW or SSC (or NYT, for that matter) is often very different from when I’m browsing Facebook or YouTube or ClickHole, and in the former, I feel that I’m more likely to take action based on what I’ve read.
Still, it’s an interesting experiment, to see if the content of LW can be ported over to the BuzzFeed model without too much loss, and I’m glad someone’s trying it. BTW, I don’t have any contacts there or anything, but in the online Christian world, I would recommend trying RELEVANT Magazine as another place to publish.
I’m not comfortable with emotional appeal myself—that’s not what I respond to personally. The same goes for the core participants of Intentional Insights. However, we’re aware of the typical mind fallacy, and the large majority of the population is not like us. Like any science popularizers—think of Bill Nye or Neil DeGrasse Tyson—we’re trying to speak to the broad population, and there’s some evidence we are getting through (see the last sections of this document).
Regarding the style of LW, I hear what you’re saying. I think it’s important to note that the goal of InIn is not primarily to cultivate Less Wrongers, but to raise the sanity waterline broadly. If we can spread good memes from Less Wrong, then we’ve done our primary job. We do aim, as a secondary component of our work, to cultivate people into aspiring rationalists and effective altruists, and in fact we have already had some accomplishments there, with people starting to read the Sequences, donate effectively, etc.
Thanks for the suggestion on the magazine, will check it out!
Thanks for reaching out! As a LW lurker, I’ve felt a bit of unease when I first heard about Intentional Insights or read the one HuffPo article, and it’s taken me a while to discern where that unease came from.
One natural interpretation is that I’m not as comfortable with emotional appeals, and since that’s expressly what you aim to give, it’s going to rub someone like me the wrong way. If that’s the case, InIn’s community will just be a different subset of the population, probably bigger like you hope, and we should accept that.
A more concerning interpretation would assert that the style of LW content is also a big part of its identity, encouraging for instance long and deep reflection and high-quality discussion about difficult topics rather than instant-gratification social media responses. My own mindset while reading LW or SSC (or NYT, for that matter) is often very different from when I’m browsing Facebook or YouTube or ClickHole, and in the former, I feel that I’m more likely to take action based on what I’ve read.
Still, it’s an interesting experiment, to see if the content of LW can be ported over to the BuzzFeed model without too much loss, and I’m glad someone’s trying it. BTW, I don’t have any contacts there or anything, but in the online Christian world, I would recommend trying RELEVANT Magazine as another place to publish.
Appreciate your insightful commentary!
I’m not comfortable with emotional appeal myself—that’s not what I respond to personally. The same goes for the core participants of Intentional Insights. However, we’re aware of the typical mind fallacy, and the large majority of the population is not like us. Like any science popularizers—think of Bill Nye or Neil DeGrasse Tyson—we’re trying to speak to the broad population, and there’s some evidence we are getting through (see the last sections of this document).
Regarding the style of LW, I hear what you’re saying. I think it’s important to note that the goal of InIn is not primarily to cultivate Less Wrongers, but to raise the sanity waterline broadly. If we can spread good memes from Less Wrong, then we’ve done our primary job. We do aim, as a secondary component of our work, to cultivate people into aspiring rationalists and effective altruists, and in fact we have already had some accomplishments there, with people starting to read the Sequences, donate effectively, etc.
Thanks for the suggestion on the magazine, will check it out!