I think the increased publicity of both would outweigh any bugs. Showing all HPMoR readers a book on how to be Harry? Showing all MoR:BLW readers a fiction about magic, using everything they’ve now learned!
Becoming Less Wrong seems to be the best option so far.
Becoming Less Wrong: The Art of Debugging Yourself
Just have it as Becoming Less Wrong or Becoming Less Wrong: Something Catchier.
These won’t work for the same reason “Winning” wouldn’t be used.
They rely on the idea that people are actively hunting for ways to be more rational, but this just isn’t true, which means that the “Wrong” isn’t going to mean what you’re hoping it’ll mean. Odds are the people who pick this book up are in middle of a relationship, or something interesting happened at work, or they’re thinking about how to do a school assignment. In other words, everything they know about life is telling them that they’re doing alright, or rather, that they personally aren’t doing wrongly. They’ll decide “This book must be for somebody else, I’ve got all my things together”, or possibly “Things are going bad right now, but I’m working to fix it, so I don’t need a book telling me to change my attitude” and set it down. The point of the book was improve their decision making thinking, not fix their attitude, but the title didn’t convey that properly, so misunderstandings were had.
“Wrong”, like “Winning”, has a completely different context outside the Less Wrong community. It’s more closely associated with vitriol, bad guys and good guys, guilt, righteous resentment, arguments. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that those feelings are the real concept of “Wrongness”, and it’s only in this community that an exotic sort of quale became substituted.
And this is why market research on non-LWers is important.
I don’t think that popular usage of ‘wrong’ is so totally divorced from the usage here, although it may not be the only usage of the word. Ultimately, however, the best way to determine that is to ask some people.
Becoming Less Wrong seems to be the best option so far.
Just so it’s near the top:
‘The Methods of Rationality’ ties in with HPMoR, and sounds amazing. To me.
‘Methods of Rationality’ hadn’t been proposed at the time. I agree, it’s pretty good. Perhaps:
Title: The Methods of Rationality
Subtitle: How to Become Less Wrong/Becoming Less Wrong
The Title:Subtitle format seems to be popular.
(However, as noted elsewhere, confusion with HPMOR may be a a bug rather than a feature )
I think the increased publicity of both would outweigh any bugs. Showing all HPMoR readers a book on how to be Harry? Showing all MoR:BLW readers a fiction about magic, using everything they’ve now learned!
These won’t work for the same reason “Winning” wouldn’t be used.
They rely on the idea that people are actively hunting for ways to be more rational, but this just isn’t true, which means that the “Wrong” isn’t going to mean what you’re hoping it’ll mean. Odds are the people who pick this book up are in middle of a relationship, or something interesting happened at work, or they’re thinking about how to do a school assignment. In other words, everything they know about life is telling them that they’re doing alright, or rather, that they personally aren’t doing wrongly. They’ll decide “This book must be for somebody else, I’ve got all my things together”, or possibly “Things are going bad right now, but I’m working to fix it, so I don’t need a book telling me to change my attitude” and set it down. The point of the book was improve their decision making thinking, not fix their attitude, but the title didn’t convey that properly, so misunderstandings were had.
“Wrong”, like “Winning”, has a completely different context outside the Less Wrong community. It’s more closely associated with vitriol, bad guys and good guys, guilt, righteous resentment, arguments. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that those feelings are the real concept of “Wrongness”, and it’s only in this community that an exotic sort of quale became substituted.
And this is why market research on non-LWers is important. I don’t think that popular usage of ‘wrong’ is so totally divorced from the usage here, although it may not be the only usage of the word. Ultimately, however, the best way to determine that is to ask some people.