Welcome! I’ve greatly enjoyed some of your books. (I don’t mean that the others were bad, I mean I haven’t read them.)
A repeated pattern in your books is this: you identify a group of interestingly strange people, spend some time among them, and then write up your experiences in a way that invites your readers to laugh (gently and with a little bit of sympathy) at them. Is it at all possible that part of your purpose in coming here is to collect material that will help internet-rationalists join the club whose existing members include conspiracy theorists, goat-starers, and psychopaths?
Ha! Ok, there’s two things I’d like to say to this appropriately wary comment! First, a lot of my work ISN’T about gently laughing at people—most notably and recently So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and my two recent podcasts—The Last Days of August and The Butterfly Effect. They’re all very much about empathy. If you want me to provide links please say so. Second, perhaps where this idea differs from some of my earlier stories (like The Men Who Stare At Goats) is that I’ve spent my whole working life as a rationalist. Like the people on this forum, it’s guided me for decades… So it feels very personal…
Noted! Also noted, at the risk of passing from “appropriately wary” to “inappropriately wary”: you didn’t actually say that you’re not planning to write a book that presents lesswrongers as weirdos to point and smile at. E.g., what you say is entirely compatible with something that begins “I’ve thought of myself as a rationalist all my life. Recently I discovered an interesting group of people on the internet who also call themselves rationalists. Join me as we take a journey down the rabbit-hole of how ‘rationality’ can lead to freezing your head, reading Harry Potter fanfiction, and running away from imaginary future basilisks.”
Again, maybe I’ve now passed from “appropriately wary” to “inappropriately wary”. But journalistic interest in the LW community in the past has usually consisted of finding some things that can be presented in a way that sounds weird and then presenting them in a way that sounds weird, and the Richlieu principle[1] means that this is pretty easy to do. I’d love to believe that This Time Is Different; maybe it is. But it doesn’t feel like a safe bet.
(I should maybe add that I expect a Jon Ronson book on Those Weird Internet Rationalists would be a lot of fun to read. But of course that’s the problem!)
[1] “Give me six lines written by the most honest of men, and I will find something in them with which to hang him.” Probably not actually said by Richlieu. More generally: if you take a person or, still more, a whole community, and look for any particular thing—weirdness, generosity, dishonesty, creepiness, brilliance, stupidity—in what they’ve said or written, it will probably not be difficult to find it, regardless of the actual nature of the person or community.
But journalistic interest in the LW community in the past has usually consisted of finding some things that can be presented in a way that sounds weird and then presenting them in a way that sounds weird
I read the NYT piece about the workshop yesterday, so I understand what you’re saying. But I should add that I’m less interested in community dynamics than I am in what happens when a person actively attempts to be more rational. So it’s the implementing of the rules that interests me the most… And the ripples that may ensue....
Related: Brienne wrote a really interesting comment about this broader dynamic in journalists and popular, about what stories are available for a writer to tell.
Welcome! I’ve greatly enjoyed some of your books. (I don’t mean that the others were bad, I mean I haven’t read them.)
A repeated pattern in your books is this: you identify a group of interestingly strange people, spend some time among them, and then write up your experiences in a way that invites your readers to laugh (gently and with a little bit of sympathy) at them. Is it at all possible that part of your purpose in coming here is to collect material that will help internet-rationalists join the club whose existing members include conspiracy theorists, goat-starers, and psychopaths?
Ha! Ok, there’s two things I’d like to say to this appropriately wary comment! First, a lot of my work ISN’T about gently laughing at people—most notably and recently So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and my two recent podcasts—The Last Days of August and The Butterfly Effect. They’re all very much about empathy. If you want me to provide links please say so. Second, perhaps where this idea differs from some of my earlier stories (like The Men Who Stare At Goats) is that I’ve spent my whole working life as a rationalist. Like the people on this forum, it’s guided me for decades… So it feels very personal…
Noted! Also noted, at the risk of passing from “appropriately wary” to “inappropriately wary”: you didn’t actually say that you’re not planning to write a book that presents lesswrongers as weirdos to point and smile at. E.g., what you say is entirely compatible with something that begins “I’ve thought of myself as a rationalist all my life. Recently I discovered an interesting group of people on the internet who also call themselves rationalists. Join me as we take a journey down the rabbit-hole of how ‘rationality’ can lead to freezing your head, reading Harry Potter fanfiction, and running away from imaginary future basilisks.”
Again, maybe I’ve now passed from “appropriately wary” to “inappropriately wary”. But journalistic interest in the LW community in the past has usually consisted of finding some things that can be presented in a way that sounds weird and then presenting them in a way that sounds weird, and the Richlieu principle[1] means that this is pretty easy to do. I’d love to believe that This Time Is Different; maybe it is. But it doesn’t feel like a safe bet.
(I should maybe add that I expect a Jon Ronson book on Those Weird Internet Rationalists would be a lot of fun to read. But of course that’s the problem!)
[1] “Give me six lines written by the most honest of men, and I will find something in them with which to hang him.” Probably not actually said by Richlieu. More generally: if you take a person or, still more, a whole community, and look for any particular thing—weirdness, generosity, dishonesty, creepiness, brilliance, stupidity—in what they’ve said or written, it will probably not be difficult to find it, regardless of the actual nature of the person or community.
Tho there are exceptions worth applauding.
I read the NYT piece about the workshop yesterday, so I understand what you’re saying. But I should add that I’m less interested in community dynamics than I am in what happens when a person actively attempts to be more rational. So it’s the implementing of the rules that interests me the most… And the ripples that may ensue....
Related: Brienne wrote a really interesting comment about this broader dynamic in journalists and popular, about what stories are available for a writer to tell.