Very few of my friends will read anything from LW that I link to them, and I suspect that they would find this link absolutely hilarious. I have never managed to get any of them to give a generalized account of exactly what they think is so systematically annoying about LW, though—they call the whole site ‘pompous’ and stop there.
When I’ve had people shoulder surf while I was visiting the site, everyone asked, “LessWrong? What’s that supposed to mean?” (5+ people). When I explained that it was a rational community where people tried to improve their thinking, they immediately began status attacks against me. One used the phrase “uber-intellectual blog” in a derogatory context and another even asked, “Are you going to come into work with a machine gun?” They often laughed at the concept.
Yup, sounds about right. The phrases ‘snide intellectualism’ and ‘ivory tower’ are things I’ve heard more than once. From my significant other, no less. I know his response is an aversion to the site and not to intellectualism in general, or else, well, he wouldn’t be my significant other, but it’s incredibly frustrating. I try to bring up topics in a general sense instead of ‘I read this really great article on Less Wrong...’ but it’s always difficult to avoid using references from people here if it’s a topic that LW deals with often.
I suppose this would be a good point to say I’m interested in advice from anyone who has successfully converted a friend or family member’s opinion of the site from knee-jerk negative to neutral or positive, given that I spent most of yesterday fuming about something absolutely ridiculous and insulting that was said in response to me bringing up the topic of cryonics.
I suppose this would be a good point to say I’m interested in advice from anyone who has successfully converted a friend or family member’s opinion of the site from knee-jerk negative to neutral or positive, given that I spent most of yesterday fuming about something absolutely ridiculous and insulting that was said in response to me bringing up the topic of cryonics.
Forget about what they think of a website. Who cares? The task is to train them out of thinking it is ok to say ridiculously insulting things to you at all! You’re worth more than that!
Very few of my friends will read anything from LW that I link to them, and I suspect that they would find this link absolutely hilarious. I have never managed to get any of them to give a generalized account of exactly what they think is so systematically annoying about LW, though—they call the whole site ‘pompous’ and stop there.
Here’s a similar story.
Yup, sounds about right. The phrases ‘snide intellectualism’ and ‘ivory tower’ are things I’ve heard more than once. From my significant other, no less. I know his response is an aversion to the site and not to intellectualism in general, or else, well, he wouldn’t be my significant other, but it’s incredibly frustrating. I try to bring up topics in a general sense instead of ‘I read this really great article on Less Wrong...’ but it’s always difficult to avoid using references from people here if it’s a topic that LW deals with often.
I suppose this would be a good point to say I’m interested in advice from anyone who has successfully converted a friend or family member’s opinion of the site from knee-jerk negative to neutral or positive, given that I spent most of yesterday fuming about something absolutely ridiculous and insulting that was said in response to me bringing up the topic of cryonics.
Forget about what they think of a website. Who cares? The task is to train them out of thinking it is ok to say ridiculously insulting things to you at all! You’re worth more than that!