Anybody else drink IPAs just cause they are cool? I know there’s someone in here. I admit it: I hated it when I first tried it. And I would have never drank that bitter^10 garbage long enough to like it, if I didn’t know it was hip first.
Maybe if it wasn’t for people doing things cause they’re hip, hard things to like at first with high future payoffs, would not even get as popular as they are today. AND THAT INCLUDES LW! Did you really love LW the first time you came across it? I did honestly fall in love with LW upon first contact, but I was already an aspiring rationalist with quite a radical take on the virtue of rationality.
So, should we care? I don’t think so. Actually i think it might even be possible that we should make LW hipper. We perhaps should make EY the Fonz of rationality; and start wearing catchy uniforms; and start speaking a secret code, etc. if we really want LW style rationality to start to catch on in meat-space. The karma system already does well to motivate you and make you feel like a part of a community; but why not just go full on cult tactics? If it’ll make people jealous, lets do it. Of course, we should always educate LWers about things you are supposed to like. But i see no good reason to turn down those that join LW because it’s hip, or any reason why we shouldn’t make it hipper, as long as we don’t change the karma system it’ll be good.
This feels wrong to me. But I don’t know why. Wanna help me out.
When promoting the truth, if you value the truth, it is wise to use especially those methods that rely on the truth being true. That way, if you have accidentally misidentified the truth, there is an automatic safety valve.
What you say is true; but associating the community for the search of the best way of looking for the truth (promoting truth? where would we take a fully-reliable truth?) with some irrelevant purely emotional symbolics doesn’t affect this safety valve.
It is not a Bayesian Conspiracy, it is Less Wrong—so if our old methods are wrong, it is the hippest thing to cast them away and become Less Wrong!
Anybody else drink IPAs just cause they are cool? I know there’s someone in here. I admit it: I hated it when I first tried it. And I would have never drank that bitter^10 garbage long enough to like it, if I didn’t know it was hip first.
Maybe if it wasn’t for people doing things cause they’re hip, hard things to like at first with high future payoffs, would not even get as popular as they are today. AND THAT INCLUDES LW! Did you really love LW the first time you came across it? I did honestly fall in love with LW upon first contact, but I was already an aspiring rationalist with quite a radical take on the virtue of rationality.
So, should we care? I don’t think so. Actually i think it might even be possible that we should make LW hipper. We perhaps should make EY the Fonz of rationality; and start wearing catchy uniforms; and start speaking a secret code, etc. if we really want LW style rationality to start to catch on in meat-space. The karma system already does well to motivate you and make you feel like a part of a community; but why not just go full on cult tactics? If it’ll make people jealous, lets do it. Of course, we should always educate LWers about things you are supposed to like. But i see no good reason to turn down those that join LW because it’s hip, or any reason why we shouldn’t make it hipper, as long as we don’t change the karma system it’ll be good.
This feels wrong to me. But I don’t know why. Wanna help me out.
When promoting the truth, if you value the truth, it is wise to use especially those methods that rely on the truth being true. That way, if you have accidentally misidentified the truth, there is an automatic safety valve.
What you say is true; but associating the community for the search of the best way of looking for the truth (promoting truth? where would we take a fully-reliable truth?) with some irrelevant purely emotional symbolics doesn’t affect this safety valve.
It is not a Bayesian Conspiracy, it is Less Wrong—so if our old methods are wrong, it is the hippest thing to cast them away and become Less Wrong!