I admire your enthusiasm and vision, but I think it needs to be tempered with some realism. What your trying to do is fantastic, but the unfortunately reality is that LW is ultimately an online interaction, and thus has certain limits that would severly impair an initiative such as this.
To give you an idea here’s my own personal hurdles in fully embracing this:
a) I already engage in face-to-face communities which whilst differnt to what you have described shares many similar values. Energy into this means less energy into them, and currently those groups reap the most reward.
b) to offer good advice to each other we need to know about each other. Whilst I can obtain huge amounts of useful advice from LW in terms of my own rationality, and how I can evanglize it, employ it etc. in terms of my actual day to day situation I can really rely on this place, for example: what should I do about Chris’ depression?
That’s not to say I couldn’t get any advice, but truly helpful stuff would be a bit beyond us because none of you know Chris.
c) If I were to devote more energy to a project such as this, it would be too the Less Wrong Sydney Meetup as posted on this site, as having face-to-face meetings and interactions has considerably more potential than something that would have too, for a long time remain online.
d) These values you can play out in day to day life without too much trouble.
I don’t want to discourage you, on the contrary I think your desire to do something like this is wonderful, but we want you to be effective.
I personally think a great place to start channeling this energy would your local LW Meetup if you have one, and if not, maybe make one. The NYC chapter I think is a great success story and shows the potential benefits of carrying through with your type of energy and enthusiasm.
I tried raising this idea at the Toronto meetup first and got a similarly lukewarm reaction. I’m totally with you that face to face interaction has great benefits though, so I’ll continue to evangelize there (thanks for the reminder and encouragement)
I admire your enthusiasm and vision, but I think it needs to be tempered with some realism. What your trying to do is fantastic, but the unfortunately reality is that LW is ultimately an online interaction, and thus has certain limits that would severly impair an initiative such as this. To give you an idea here’s my own personal hurdles in fully embracing this:
a) I already engage in face-to-face communities which whilst differnt to what you have described shares many similar values. Energy into this means less energy into them, and currently those groups reap the most reward.
b) to offer good advice to each other we need to know about each other. Whilst I can obtain huge amounts of useful advice from LW in terms of my own rationality, and how I can evanglize it, employ it etc. in terms of my actual day to day situation I can really rely on this place, for example: what should I do about Chris’ depression? That’s not to say I couldn’t get any advice, but truly helpful stuff would be a bit beyond us because none of you know Chris.
c) If I were to devote more energy to a project such as this, it would be too the Less Wrong Sydney Meetup as posted on this site, as having face-to-face meetings and interactions has considerably more potential than something that would have too, for a long time remain online.
d) These values you can play out in day to day life without too much trouble.
I don’t want to discourage you, on the contrary I think your desire to do something like this is wonderful, but we want you to be effective. I personally think a great place to start channeling this energy would your local LW Meetup if you have one, and if not, maybe make one. The NYC chapter I think is a great success story and shows the potential benefits of carrying through with your type of energy and enthusiasm.
I tried raising this idea at the Toronto meetup first and got a similarly lukewarm reaction. I’m totally with you that face to face interaction has great benefits though, so I’ll continue to evangelize there (thanks for the reminder and encouragement)