Good question. I’ve been thinking of the social arm of the rationality scene for a while as a revival or modernization of the concept of a fraternal society, of which the Masons are probably the most famous example, or of the social clubs with which they were often associated; but I haven’t looked much into best practices for that sort of organization. In retrospect it seems like a stupidly obvious thing to be asking. Here’s what I can think of off the top of my head.
Fundamentally I think societies like the Masons get most of their value not from any specific goals or practices, but simply from being a nucleus for cooperation and social contact among sub-Dunbar groups of intelligent people. As long as you only care about intellectual interaction, it’s probably easier to find such a nucleus now than it was in the decades when these groups were most prominent—the whole point of social media is to provide a platform where groups of people can agglutinate—but if you’re looking for physical, in-person interaction it’s harder than ever. Any further development of this aspect of the scene should keep that in mind.
Having somewhat nebulous goals is probably a feature, not a bug. If your social scene is into sponsoring charity and furthering rational values in a general sort of way, but is intentionally apolitical with regard to religion, politics, or the other major alignments of the time, you’re essentially contributing to a partial inoculation against ideology. This strikes me as both prosocial and instrumentally useful to members.
It’s common for these societies to require some sort of initiatory ordeal. Anthropologically these are pretty common and serve several purposes, but most importantly they’re a hard-to-fake signal of dedication and in some sense competence, functioning as a filter for people with high maturity and executive function and against dilettantes and freeloaders. I think some version of this this has the potential to be very useful for us, albeit with the caveat that it’s probably the most cultish practice of the Masons and their various peers. It might not need to take the form of an ordeal, though; Burning Man culture, for example, has similar barriers to entry implicit in the logistics of getting to and surviving in a fantastically hostile desert for a week.
Incidentally, it’s somewhat improper to refer to this sort of thing as a cult, as you allude in your links; many such societies have goals and often a body of ritual praxis, but it’s rare for them to share any specific orthodoxy, and most are explicitly nondenominational.
It’s common for these societies to require some sort of initiatory ordeal.
We had one. It was called “reading the frickin’ Sequences”. It was on every tongue, in every thread. Ah, it was a golden age! Then men and elves grew soft.
I’m working on it, but you have to admit they are extremely long. They’re several years of content and not all of them are easy to internalize.
I understand that joining (and more importantly becoming accepted in) an (online) community should require some effort. You don’t join /r/HPMOR without having read at least a couple of chapters. You don’t join a Magic: The Gathering or Dungeons and Dragons forum without at least knowing a little bit about the games.
But more importantly, I think, isn’t the effort that preceded joining the community. It’s the commitment to improvement that matters. When you join a baseball team, you’re not judged on your ability to throw or hit a ball, you’re judged on your willingness to come to trainings and observe the games your team plays.
So having the Sequences as (part of) a rite of initiation is okay, but there would need to be some system of support to help newcomers through them.
Fair point. I don’t actually think that the move away from that was a bad one, though; reading the Sequences is at the very least a bit too easy to paint as indoctrination. It also selects for people with large amounts of free time, which might not be what we’re looking for; the people most likely to read 500,000 words are, or are indistinguishable from, bored teenagers.
(Disclaimer: I have in fact read the frickin’ Sequences.)
the people most likely to read 500,000 words are, or are indistinguishable from, bored teenagers.
An average bored teenager spends a lot of time online, but not systematically reading texts about rationality. There are just too many alternatives, and many of them are hundred times more attractive to a random teenager. Making the choice to spend that time reading the Sequences instead of something else certainly means something.
I understand if people are too busy to read the Sequences. However, the more comments they write on LW, the smaller my understanding becomes. Could we have a community norm of expecting people to read 10 articles before they start contributing, and then 1 additional article for each 10 comments they write? Yeah, in real life it would be complicated to measure, but the idea is that if someone has enough time to chat on the internet, then they also have the time to read a part of the Sequences, they just prefer not to.
I think I agree with the general thrust of this, although I still think you’re underestimating the attractiveness of Sequences-like material to a certain type of teenager. When I was that age, I was reading political philosophy of about the same length and density and, er, somewhat lesser overall quality; the Sequences didn’t exist at the time, but if they had I expect they would have scratched that itch far more effectively. I am of course a sample space of one, but the survey results do seem to suggest that I’m not entirely wrong: we do skew awfully hard towards college-aged people and younger.
In any case, I’m not saying that reading the Sequences isn’t a good idea; if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have stuck it out that far myself. I just don’t think it’s a particularly good thing to be targeting as part of the initiatory phase of someone’s communication with the LW community. Particularly the physical, person-to-person part of it, which is what I was mainly referring to.
Reading a body of ‘sacred texts’ (ahem) is not uncommon as part of the preparation of initiation rituals. What may be missing is some kind of examination of the competence of the ‘apprentice’.
Having somewhat nebulous goals is probably a feature, not a bug.
For a society: Yes. Definitely. It allows to adapts to change. And we live in changing times.
Initiatory ordeal [is] a hard-to-fake signal of dedication and in some sense competence, functioning as a filter for people with high maturity and executive function and against dilettantes and freeloaders.
Definitely. And if the meetups grow in size structure is needed and such a filter for competence may be helpful.
I wonder whether EY would condone rituals like Brennan’s in http://lesswrong.com/lw/p1/initiation_ceremony/ for such a purpose. Even if grossly exaggerated this surely looks like a filter for competent and mature people.
Burning Man culture, for example, has similar barriers to entry
I was actually talking about Burning Man as a broader social phenomenon. As it happens, though, I did attend Bayes Camp in 2011 and 2012, and I’m pretty happy with it in this context; I’m still in touch with many of the people I met through it, and I think the difficulty and expense of helping set up a camp was a strong contributor to that bond.
Incidentally, there seems to be something similar going on among CFAR alumni; but as I don’t belong to that group I can’t comment too authoritatively on it.
Good question. I’ve been thinking of the social arm of the rationality scene for a while as a revival or modernization of the concept of a fraternal society, of which the Masons are probably the most famous example, or of the social clubs with which they were often associated; but I haven’t looked much into best practices for that sort of organization. In retrospect it seems like a stupidly obvious thing to be asking. Here’s what I can think of off the top of my head.
Fundamentally I think societies like the Masons get most of their value not from any specific goals or practices, but simply from being a nucleus for cooperation and social contact among sub-Dunbar groups of intelligent people. As long as you only care about intellectual interaction, it’s probably easier to find such a nucleus now than it was in the decades when these groups were most prominent—the whole point of social media is to provide a platform where groups of people can agglutinate—but if you’re looking for physical, in-person interaction it’s harder than ever. Any further development of this aspect of the scene should keep that in mind.
Having somewhat nebulous goals is probably a feature, not a bug. If your social scene is into sponsoring charity and furthering rational values in a general sort of way, but is intentionally apolitical with regard to religion, politics, or the other major alignments of the time, you’re essentially contributing to a partial inoculation against ideology. This strikes me as both prosocial and instrumentally useful to members.
It’s common for these societies to require some sort of initiatory ordeal. Anthropologically these are pretty common and serve several purposes, but most importantly they’re a hard-to-fake signal of dedication and in some sense competence, functioning as a filter for people with high maturity and executive function and against dilettantes and freeloaders. I think some version of this this has the potential to be very useful for us, albeit with the caveat that it’s probably the most cultish practice of the Masons and their various peers. It might not need to take the form of an ordeal, though; Burning Man culture, for example, has similar barriers to entry implicit in the logistics of getting to and surviving in a fantastically hostile desert for a week.
Incidentally, it’s somewhat improper to refer to this sort of thing as a cult, as you allude in your links; many such societies have goals and often a body of ritual praxis, but it’s rare for them to share any specific orthodoxy, and most are explicitly nondenominational.
We had one. It was called “reading the frickin’ Sequences”. It was on every tongue, in every thread. Ah, it was a golden age! Then men and elves grew soft.
I’m working on it, but you have to admit they are extremely long. They’re several years of content and not all of them are easy to internalize.
I understand that joining (and more importantly becoming accepted in) an (online) community should require some effort. You don’t join /r/HPMOR without having read at least a couple of chapters. You don’t join a Magic: The Gathering or Dungeons and Dragons forum without at least knowing a little bit about the games.
But more importantly, I think, isn’t the effort that preceded joining the community. It’s the commitment to improvement that matters. When you join a baseball team, you’re not judged on your ability to throw or hit a ball, you’re judged on your willingness to come to trainings and observe the games your team plays.
So having the Sequences as (part of) a rite of initiation is okay, but there would need to be some system of support to help newcomers through them.
Fair point. I don’t actually think that the move away from that was a bad one, though; reading the Sequences is at the very least a bit too easy to paint as indoctrination. It also selects for people with large amounts of free time, which might not be what we’re looking for; the people most likely to read 500,000 words are, or are indistinguishable from, bored teenagers.
(Disclaimer: I have in fact read the frickin’ Sequences.)
An average bored teenager spends a lot of time online, but not systematically reading texts about rationality. There are just too many alternatives, and many of them are hundred times more attractive to a random teenager. Making the choice to spend that time reading the Sequences instead of something else certainly means something.
I understand if people are too busy to read the Sequences. However, the more comments they write on LW, the smaller my understanding becomes. Could we have a community norm of expecting people to read 10 articles before they start contributing, and then 1 additional article for each 10 comments they write? Yeah, in real life it would be complicated to measure, but the idea is that if someone has enough time to chat on the internet, then they also have the time to read a part of the Sequences, they just prefer not to.
I think I agree with the general thrust of this, although I still think you’re underestimating the attractiveness of Sequences-like material to a certain type of teenager. When I was that age, I was reading political philosophy of about the same length and density and, er, somewhat lesser overall quality; the Sequences didn’t exist at the time, but if they had I expect they would have scratched that itch far more effectively. I am of course a sample space of one, but the survey results do seem to suggest that I’m not entirely wrong: we do skew awfully hard towards college-aged people and younger.
In any case, I’m not saying that reading the Sequences isn’t a good idea; if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have stuck it out that far myself. I just don’t think it’s a particularly good thing to be targeting as part of the initiatory phase of someone’s communication with the LW community. Particularly the physical, person-to-person part of it, which is what I was mainly referring to.
Reading a body of ‘sacred texts’ (ahem) is not uncommon as part of the preparation of initiation rituals. What may be missing is some kind of examination of the competence of the ‘apprentice’.
For a society: Yes. Definitely. It allows to adapts to change. And we live in changing times.
Definitely. And if the meetups grow in size structure is needed and such a filter for competence may be helpful.
I wonder whether EY would condone rituals like Brennan’s in http://lesswrong.com/lw/p1/initiation_ceremony/ for such a purpose. Even if grossly exaggerated this surely looks like a filter for competent and mature people.
I guess you are referring to http://lesswrong.com/lw/2mp/burning_man_meetup_bayes_camp/ . Can somebody tell whether that was successfulk in this sense?
I was actually talking about Burning Man as a broader social phenomenon. As it happens, though, I did attend Bayes Camp in 2011 and 2012, and I’m pretty happy with it in this context; I’m still in touch with many of the people I met through it, and I think the difficulty and expense of helping set up a camp was a strong contributor to that bond.
Incidentally, there seems to be something similar going on among CFAR alumni; but as I don’t belong to that group I can’t comment too authoritatively on it.