Here are some homologous roles in the LW San Francisco Bay Area community:
Rationality Camp is run by capable teachers. Right now they’re busy with rationality camp. There may be a separate rationality seminar in Berkeley at some point. But presently there is no Sunday School experience that everyone in the community goes to.
In Mountain View, Shannon Friedman has been teaching newbies once a week, using the Sequences as a manual.
So far, we only have one thing remotely like the LDS home teaching program: The rationality mini-camp participants set up a rotating Skyping buddy schedule. This ensures that community members have regular interaction with a variety of other community members. It differs from the home teaching program in that the roles are symmetric, it’s not in-person, and you can’t really give your skyping buddy a ride to the airport if they’re a thousand miles away.
That is, until the nearest rationalist is down the block. LDS has the advantage of physical proximity due to local concentration, so it seems that most of us on the “rational frontier-land” need to either move to SF Bay, or propagate rationality by conversion until local support becomes a statistical possibility. Using the Sequences as a standard toolbox would be a great way, if one understands one of them (proficiently), to offer a potential rationalist a Wow! moment to get them on the Way.
As I suspect that there are criteria when on “mission work” for identifying potential converts to LDS, what characteristics would one look for in a person who would be more likely to become Less Wrong? It’s not as if you can just go around asking people what their g level is. Well, not politely, anyway.
It’s easier to get someone hooked on Methods of Rationality than on the Sequences. And if someone likes Methods of Rationality, there’s a good chance they’ll be interested in going to a meetup.
Here are some homologous roles in the LW San Francisco Bay Area community:
Rationality Camp is run by capable teachers. Right now they’re busy with rationality camp. There may be a separate rationality seminar in Berkeley at some point. But presently there is no Sunday School experience that everyone in the community goes to.
In Mountain View, Shannon Friedman has been teaching newbies once a week, using the Sequences as a manual.
So far, we only have one thing remotely like the LDS home teaching program: The rationality mini-camp participants set up a rotating Skyping buddy schedule. This ensures that community members have regular interaction with a variety of other community members. It differs from the home teaching program in that the roles are symmetric, it’s not in-person, and you can’t really give your skyping buddy a ride to the airport if they’re a thousand miles away.
That is, until the nearest rationalist is down the block. LDS has the advantage of physical proximity due to local concentration, so it seems that most of us on the “rational frontier-land” need to either move to SF Bay, or propagate rationality by conversion until local support becomes a statistical possibility. Using the Sequences as a standard toolbox would be a great way, if one understands one of them (proficiently), to offer a potential rationalist a Wow! moment to get them on the Way. As I suspect that there are criteria when on “mission work” for identifying potential converts to LDS, what characteristics would one look for in a person who would be more likely to become Less Wrong? It’s not as if you can just go around asking people what their g level is. Well, not politely, anyway.
It’s easier to get someone hooked on Methods of Rationality than on the Sequences. And if someone likes Methods of Rationality, there’s a good chance they’ll be interested in going to a meetup.