Would you consider a topic related to the “herding cats” category?
Mentoring, that is.
Lack of engagement with the established members is definitely a big barrier encountered by newcomers. You wouldn’t expect to gain converts as a missionary just by uploading the Holy Bible to the internet page by page and giving each page a comments section, or by posting your personal insights about your religion onto this site. And yet, this is essentially what newcomers experience on LW.
I like your idea to get veterans of this community to have a conversation with newcomers, but I don’t think just one conversation is enough. If this was taken one step further, then we could have a system similar to the university research system. One “professor” takes on a group of “undergrads” and guides them on their way to overcoming their biases. Another benefit would be that each student now has an immediate group of people at about the same rationality level with whom they can discuss what they are currently learning, and the leader can recognize if the group is covering new ground or if they are beginning to miss the point.
This is essentially how the Bayesian Conspiracy system works in the beisutsukai series, anyway. It would be incredibly cool, especially to “students” like me, if you “sensei”s actually went ahead and implemented this system.
Edit: the actual implementation depends on the geographic distribution of people willing to become teachers. If most of the teachers are just concentrated in the Silicon Valley area, then maybe an online system could work, where each “group” of learners communicates with each other through a mailing list. When the community gets big enough, some of the regional meet-ups could turn into sessions for the Bayesian Conspiracy.
Lack of engagement with the established members is definitely a big barrier encountered by newcomers..
If you ask this newcomer, the problem is the arrogant obnoxiousness of the engagment.
I was informed that I needed to “learn rationality” (after 30 years of studying science, logic, philosophy etc) and that this provided a “solution to free will” (which turned
out to be a mediocre piece of speculation).
If you want to promote yourselves as
an Ayn Rand style cult, you are going just the right way.
Would you consider a topic related to the “herding cats” category?
Mentoring, that is.
Lack of engagement with the established members is definitely a big barrier encountered by newcomers. You wouldn’t expect to gain converts as a missionary just by uploading the Holy Bible to the internet page by page and giving each page a comments section, or by posting your personal insights about your religion onto this site. And yet, this is essentially what newcomers experience on LW.
I like your idea to get veterans of this community to have a conversation with newcomers, but I don’t think just one conversation is enough. If this was taken one step further, then we could have a system similar to the university research system. One “professor” takes on a group of “undergrads” and guides them on their way to overcoming their biases. Another benefit would be that each student now has an immediate group of people at about the same rationality level with whom they can discuss what they are currently learning, and the leader can recognize if the group is covering new ground or if they are beginning to miss the point.
This is essentially how the Bayesian Conspiracy system works in the beisutsukai series, anyway. It would be incredibly cool, especially to “students” like me, if you “sensei”s actually went ahead and implemented this system.
Edit: the actual implementation depends on the geographic distribution of people willing to become teachers. If most of the teachers are just concentrated in the Silicon Valley area, then maybe an online system could work, where each “group” of learners communicates with each other through a mailing list. When the community gets big enough, some of the regional meet-ups could turn into sessions for the Bayesian Conspiracy.
If you ask this newcomer, the problem is the arrogant obnoxiousness of the engagment.
I was informed that I needed to “learn rationality” (after 30 years of studying science, logic, philosophy etc) and that this provided a “solution to free will” (which turned out to be a mediocre piece of speculation).
If you want to promote yourselves as an Ayn Rand style cult, you are going just the right way.