My hot take is that you might want to be careful about how much of Less Wrong you throw at people right away.
I hadn’t thought about it this way before and don’t have a great model of how new people might respond to LW. Would the same apply to SSC, or is Scott Alexander less “weird in a way that repulses a decent number of people”? (I’ll strongly consider putting more emphasis on Scout Mindset-ish stuff regardless, and would appreciate suggestions for more readings “that teach[] a generalizable core rationality skill.”)
I think SSC is less off putting for a wider audience because it’s less weird. It still repulses its fair share of folks, but in my estimation there’s less false negatives there: the people repulsed are the people least likely to click with rationalist ideas, whereas I know folks who are fans of SSC who bounce off LW for cultural reasons that have nothing to do with the core ideas.
Interesting.
I hadn’t thought about it this way before and don’t have a great model of how new people might respond to LW. Would the same apply to SSC, or is Scott Alexander less “weird in a way that repulses a decent number of people”? (I’ll strongly consider putting more emphasis on Scout Mindset-ish stuff regardless, and would appreciate suggestions for more readings “that teach[] a generalizable core rationality skill.”)
I think SSC is less off putting for a wider audience because it’s less weird. It still repulses its fair share of folks, but in my estimation there’s less false negatives there: the people repulsed are the people least likely to click with rationalist ideas, whereas I know folks who are fans of SSC who bounce off LW for cultural reasons that have nothing to do with the core ideas.