A friend and I hope to host a MIRIxVancouver workshop in Vancouver, Canada sometime in October. We haven’t filed an application with MIRI yet, and we haven’t set a date, so there’s no schedule yet. So, this is just a shout-out to anyone who might want to get involved in it over a weekend, including if you want to visit from Seattle, or Oregon, or anywhere nearby. Comment below, or send me a PM, if you’re interested in attending.
Evan_Gaensbauer
Karma: 1,841
Vancouver has enough of a diversity of people interested in the MIRI who can host their own friends that I believe it will make sense to host multiple different MIRIx workshops. Like, I find the MIRI very interesting, but I want to grasp technically what it’s about. Another one of my friends is interested in the philosophy of A.I., and yet another friend is a former MIRI intern who will invite a bunch of his friends from the university math department over. So, I’ll likely host workshops at different levels of depth, or with different topics.
Thanks for the welcome.
I had a previous Less Wrong account under the username eggman. I got one with my full name to sync with my username on the new effective altruism forum, as I intend to post more frequently on both that site, and Less Wrong, and I figured it’d make sense for everyone to know my common identity so they can connect different ideas written on difference sites, or with my public identity.
I sometimes organize the LW meetup in Vancouver, and it’s going fine.
A heuristic I’ve previously encountered being thrown around about whether to donate to the MIRI, or the FHI, is to fund whichever one has more room for more funding, or whichever one is experiencing more of a funding crunch at a given time. As Less Wrong is a hub for an unusually large number of donors to each of these organizations, it might be nice if there was a (semi-)annual discussion on these matters with representatives from the various organizations. How feasible would this be?
A couple of my friends mentioned it, without being able to pinpoint what it was, so I wasn’t asking about it too much. However, it’s denial cannot be existed if it’s on the map of the rationalist community. What the heck is ‘post-rationality’?
.impact is a volunteer task force of effective altruists who take upon projects not linked to any one organization. .impact deals in particular with implementing open-source software resources that are useful to effective altruists. Well, that’s what it’s trying to specialize in; the decentralized coordination of remote volunteers is very difficult.
Anyway, on the effective altruism forum, I was involved with a discussion about building an interactive visual map that updates on what the status of projects, and funding, for effective altruist organizations. Anybody trying to reduce existential risk would fall under effective altruism, so ostensibly, they’d be included on such a map, too. This would solve most of the problem I myself posed above.
I’ll update Less Wrong in the future if I get wind of any progress on such a project. Anyone: send me a private message if you want more information.
On the suggestion of Gunnar_Zarncke, this comment has been transformed into a Discussion post.
At the rationality meetup today, there was a great newcomer. He’s read up most of Eliezer’s Yudkowsky’s original Sequences up to 2010, and he’s also read a handful of posts promoted on the front page. As a landing pad for the rationalist community, to me, Less Wrong seems to be about updating beyond the abstract reasoning principles of philosophy past, toward realizing that through a combination of microeconomics, probability theory, decision theory, cognitive science, social psychology, and information theory, that humans can each hack their own minds, and notice how they use heuristics, to increase their success rate at which they form functional beliefs, and achieve their goals.
Then, I think about how if someone has only been following the rationalist community of Less Wrong for the last few years, and then they come to a meetup for the first time in 2014, everyone else who’s been around for a few years will be talking about things that don’t seem to fit with the above model of what the rationalist community is about. Putting myself back into a newcomer/outsider perspective, here are some memes that don’t seem to immediately, obviously follow from ‘cultivating rationality habits’:
Citing Moloch, an ancient demon, as a metaphorical source of all the problems humanity currently faces.
How a long series of essays yearning for the days of yore has led to intensely insular discussion of polarized contrarian social movements, This doesn’t square with how Less Wrong has historically avoided political debates because of how they often drift to ideological bickering, name-calling, and signaling allegiance to a coalition. Such debates aren’t usually conducive to everyone reaching more accurate conclusions together, but we’re having them anyway.
Some of us reversing our previous opinions on what’s fundamentally true, or false.
Less Wrong is also welcomes discussion of contrarian, and controversial, ideas, such as cryopreservation, and transhumanism. If this is the first thing somebody learns about Less Wrong through the grapevine, the first independent sources they may come across may be rather unflattering of the community as a whole, and disproportionately cynical about what most of us actually believe. Furthermore, controversy attracts media coverage like moths to a flame, which hasn’t gone to well for Less Wrong, and which falsely paints divergent opinions as our majority beliefs.
I’m not calling for Less Wrong to write a press coverage package, or protocol. However, I want to foster a local community at which I can discuss cognitive science, and the applications of microeconomics of everyday life, without new friends getting hung up on the weird beliefs they associate me with.
Additionally, in growing the local meetup, my friends, and I, in Vancouver, have gone to other meetups, and seeded the idea that it’s worth our friend’s time to check out Less Wrong. We’ve made waves to the point that a local student newspaper may want to publish an article about what Less Wrong is about, and profile some of my friends in particular. However, this has backfired to the point where I meet new people, or talk to old friends, and they’re associating me with creepy beliefs I don’t follow. It sucks that I feel I might have to do damage control for my personal standing in a close-knit community. So, I’m going to try writing another post detailing all the boring, useful ideas on Less Wrong nobody else notices, such as Luke’s posts about scientific self-help, or Scott’s great arguments in favor or niceness, community, and having better debates by interpreting your opponent’s arguments charitably, or the repositories of useful resources.
If you have links/resources about the most boring useful ideas on Less Wrong, or an introduction that highlights, e.g., all the discourse of Less Wrong which is merely the practical applications of scientific insight for everyday life, please share them below. I’ll try including them in whatever guide I generate.
Gunnar_Zarncke also commented that I should at least turn my above comment into a post in Discussion. Before I do that, or if I go on to post it to Main. if the reception goes well enough, I’d like to strengthen my own post by including your experience in it. I mean, the point I made above seems to be making enough headway on the few things I did alone, and if the weight of your clout as a well-known effective altruist, and rationalist, is thrown behind it, I believe we could make even more traction in generating positive externalities by encouraging others.
I remember there was a ‘Less Wrong as a social catalyst’ thread several months ago we both posted in, found valuable, and got great receptions for the feedback we provided. I might mine the comments there for similar experiences, message some users, and see if they don’t mind doing this. If you know of other friends, or peers, on Less Wrong, who have had a similar experience, I’d encourage you to get them on board as well. The more examples we can provide, of a more diverse base of users, the stronger case we can build. In doing so, I’d attribute you as a co-author/collaborator/provider of feedback when I make this a post in its own right.
I’ll do that. However, Peter Hurford listed his similar experience below. This post can generate even more value (and I don’t mean karma, I mean people dovetailing) on its value with better, stronger examples than just the ones I’ve provided above. I’m thinking this could be a repository, and a catalyst for ever more users to get values out of Less Wrong as both a community, and a resource, like this. If you know of other users with similar experiences, please ask them if they’d be willing to share their stories, and include them in this post.
I believe you’re right. I’m not familiar with the Great Filter being lambasted outside of Less Wrong, but myself, and the people I know personally, have generally discussed the Great Filter less than we have Friendly A.I. On one hand, the Great Filter seems more associated with Overcoming Bias, so coverage of it is tangential to, and having a neutral impact upon, Less Wrong. On the other hand, I spend more time on this website, so my impression could be due to the availability heuristic only. In that case, please share any outside media coverage you know of the Great Filter.
Anyway, I chose Moloch to stay current, and also because citing a baby-eating demon as the destroyer of the world seems even more eschatological than Friendly A.I. So, Moloch strikes me as potentially even more prone to misinterpretation. (un)Friendly A.I. has already been wholly conflated with a scandal about a counterfactual monster that need not be named. It seems to me that that could snowball into misinterpretations of Moloch bouncing across the blogosphere like a game of Broken Telephone until there’s a widely-read article about Less Wrong having gone about atheism, and rationalism, so thoroughly wrong that it flipped back around to ancient religions.
The fact that Less Wrong periodically has to do damage control because there is even anything on this website that can be misinterpreted as eschatology seems demonstrative of a persistent image problem. Morosely, the fact that the outside perspective misinterprets something from this site as dangerous eschatology, perhaps because someone would have to read lots of now relatively obscure blog posts to otherwise grok it, doesn’t surprise me too much.
Gunnar got enough upvotes for merely suggesting that I post this in Discussion that it shows a lot of promise. I didn’t anticipate this, and know I’m feeling ambitious. More than just generating a single thread of positive Less Wrong responses, I’d prefer to a call for any members of the site with a deep, broad enough experience of getting great advice from Less Wrong to make a post of their own as I will. So, yes, make your own.
However, if we can get others to come out of the woodwork to write reports, inspire more users to ask personal questions of Less Wrong, and then get them to turn that into future posts, there potential for personal growth for dozens of users on this site. I wouldn’t call it a chain reaction, per se, but I anticipate an unknown unknown value of positive externalities to be generated, and I want us to capture that value.
At the time I wrote the original comment, I didn’t want to come across as going on a crusade to change everything out of some sort of over-reaction, so I downplayed what could have been construed as my intentions. However, I don’t see a problem with creating it. I don’t know if I’ll do this myself. What I will do though is post a comment in the next open thread about if there’s any changes Less Wrong members want to see made to the Less Wrong Wiki. It’s a neglected but valuable resource that become even better with more additions.
Holden Karnofsky is great, and Less Wrong is a great discussion board in a community for being so receptive of arguing against orthodox views. If he identified as a rationalist, I’m sure this community would be fine counting Holden Karnofsky among themselves. However, some media coverage Less Wrong has received is exactly as it is because bloggers, or journalists, or whoever, don’t come to this site to have a dialogue, and for both sides to learn something from each other.
I don’t think that online forums need media exposure. The usual way to find an online forum is through a Google search or through a shared link to a discussion.
I wrote this comment in the moment without lots of forethought, so I didn’t clarify myself enough. I haven’t invited a student journalist to write an article about Less Wrong to get good press coverage because others are worse. The publication is small enough that it wouldn’t get enough traffic to change the outside cultural perspective of Less Wrong’s culture anyway. One of the editors mentioned to this student journalist that I’m an organizer for the local meetup, and he came with me with lots of questions. Before he asked, he mentioned his impression thus far of Less Wrong was that it was full of ‘hyper-rationalist pseudoscience’, and that a typical belief of Less Wrong was of that of a fear-inspiring imaginary counter-factual monster I need not mention by name.
Anyway, in particular, he may want to profile the local meetup. So, I could let him go on impressions he gets from Slate, and RationalWiki, alone, or he could talk to me, and get an impression that Less Wrong is about literally anything else besides fringe transhumanism.
If the article really becomes a thing, I will invite the journalist to interface with Less Wrong as Holden has. If the article is about ‘what is this intellectual community we [the readership] have heard popping up in town, and what do they believe?’, I will now direct him to the Less Wrong survey results. You’ve inspired me to do this with your feedback, ChristianKI, so thanks.
I’m curious. Who is Holden Karnofsky high-status to, in your opinion? I mean, I acknowledge that this website, and effective altruism, and maybe a subset of the philanthropy community in the United States is very enthusiastic about the work he does. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have given Givewell $1000 USD last year.
However, my friends from outside the efficient charity cluster don’t know who he is, and I doubt would update to extolling his greatness as soon as I explained what he does anyway.
For the last few years, my friend Eric and I have been part of the skeptic community in Vancouver. He had been involved with the rationalist community for a couple of years before I was, and then I eventually came around. After having each gone to CFAR workshops, Eric, a couple other CFAR alumni friends, and myself returned to Vancouver inspired and excited to seed a community as vibrant as that in the Bay Area. So, we go to other meetups for skeptics, and the like, and discuss their ideas, and tell them if they want to expand the sort of thinking going on at skeptics meetups to novel topics, to join us at our Less Wrong meetup.
We have also reached out to some local university clubs, the local Bitcoin scene, and the life extension community. This has gone phenomenal. I feel like we’re finally putting all the pieces of the correct contrarian cluster puzzle together. ‘Hanging out with my closest friends’, and ‘learning important things with others’ are synonymous in my social life.
However, with the few skeptics groups, with a misplaced explanation of a technological singularity here, and a heated debate on cryonics my other friend had over there, I’ve meet people at parties asking me why I hold peculiar beliefs that I don’t hold. The freethought community in Vancouver is very insular, as over half the city, by census data, identifies as not belonging to a major religious denomination. We got too enthusiastic in growing the meetup, turned some people off, and gossip started. If an article is written poorly, than not for all of Less Wrong, but for my friends, and I, in particular the pattern could become crystallized that we’re kooks only pretending to be freethinkers. This wouldn’t bode well, but in collaboration, I can help decrease distrust, and strengthen bonds between two communities that seem like they should be allies rather than enemies. This doesn’t affect the whole community, maybe just my corner of it. Suggestions are welcome.
I agree with ahbwramc. Going From California with An Aching Heart doesn’t seem to be something written by someone only kinda involved with the rationalist community.
First of all, mea culpa.
I should have provided more context to assuage confusion. The Talon is an alternative social justice publication at a local university. Their editorial board overlaps with the skeptic community in Vancouver itself, which is quite insular, which overlaps with the rationality meetup in Vancouver, too.
There has been some ideological bickering, name-calling, and signaling allegiance to a coalition of classic skeptic community v. Less Wrong perspectives on the Internet, and at various meetups, maybe at pubs, in Vancouver. I myself, among others, may not have engaged in discussions, or debates, as judiciously as would have been prudent. This also involved arguments over articles written on Slate Star Codex, which ‘social justice warriors’, as some call them(selves), find upsetting.
However, none of us here on Less Wrong knew there was enough chatter going around that the first time I meet a journalist, he knew who I was, and asked him why my friends held such peculiar beliefs that are out of line with mainstream scientific consensus if we’re ‘rationalists’. He was a friendly guy I actually like, but his misconceptions seemed worrisome, if he wanted to profile people I know personally. I don’t want a schism rising in my neck of the woods where my friends and I are seen as kooky neckbeards as soon as we enter a public space.
every month or two
Reading the history of Less Wrong backwards is funny.
My name is Evan Gaensbauer. I’m starting an account on the new effective altruism forum with the same name, and I intend to post both here and there more frequently in the future. Additionally, I may write material for one site that is tangentially of interest to the readers on the other site. So, I want everyone to match what I write on different sites with me as the author. Some notable facts about me:
I live in Vancouver, Canada, where I help organize some of the effective altruism, and rationality meetups.
I’m an alumnus of the July 2013 CFAR workshop.
I’m a member of 80,000 Hours.