It may be useful to distinguish between the goal-oriented skills of rationality (The Craft) and the people who gathered around the effort to build those skills (The Community) when talking about this. For example, if everyone was very careful and diligent about their posts on LW, but there was also a Discord channel full of people making whale puns and jokes about using one boxing glove on omega, would that fit what you want?
Because that exists. As Elo says in another post, there’s a slack, a discord or two, an irc, a sort of loose constellation of tumblrs, etc.
I’m glad of the existence of a high standards place of discussion. I like reading the higher quality posts on Less Wrong, even if I don’t usually have the motivation to write in that vernacular. I’m also glad that of the diaspora surrounding it that trade some quality of discussion for humour value. That said, I know I have a similar feeling about speaking up in the discord that I do about approaching a cluster of people talking to each other- an irrational impulse that I’ll be interrupting Important People and won’t measure up. This is basically the same feeling I have IRL, and my solution is the same. (Mentally suck in my gut, put on a smile, and do it anyway.) Even once I successfully speak up in a crowd, I can sometimes feel like I glanced off, that the contact was shortlived. I went to the NY Solstice last year, and despite having a really good time and meeting a bunch of people, I have to admit I haven’t kept up any of those contacts like I’d hoped would happen.
I think a solution might be something like differentiating your warm fuzzies and your effective altruism. Lets keep Less Wrong’s quality filter about where it is, while sometimes using it as a common place from which to spin off fun groups if we want. And, in the interests of attempting a solution- If you’d like to do some overwatch or play some D&D*, I’m game. I suspect an open invite to a tabletop game on the open thread wouldn’t be badly received, and I’ve actually been considering that as a very low scale version of the community building efforts.
*I’m using D&D as a generic term here. I’d actually probably reach for Dungeon World, Exalted, or Chuubo’s before I went for Dungeons & Dragons proper.
If you failed you’d want to distinguish between (a) rationalism sucking, (b) your rationalism sucking, or (c) EVE already being full of rationalists.
Whether or not success in Eve is relevant outside Eve is debatable, but I think the complexity, politics and intense competition means that it would be hard to find a better online proving ground.
It may be useful to distinguish between the goal-oriented skills of rationality (The Craft) and the people who gathered around the effort to build those skills (The Community) when talking about this. For example, if everyone was very careful and diligent about their posts on LW, but there was also a Discord channel full of people making whale puns and jokes about using one boxing glove on omega, would that fit what you want?
Because that exists. As Elo says in another post, there’s a slack, a discord or two, an irc, a sort of loose constellation of tumblrs, etc.
I’m glad of the existence of a high standards place of discussion. I like reading the higher quality posts on Less Wrong, even if I don’t usually have the motivation to write in that vernacular. I’m also glad that of the diaspora surrounding it that trade some quality of discussion for humour value. That said, I know I have a similar feeling about speaking up in the discord that I do about approaching a cluster of people talking to each other- an irrational impulse that I’ll be interrupting Important People and won’t measure up. This is basically the same feeling I have IRL, and my solution is the same. (Mentally suck in my gut, put on a smile, and do it anyway.) Even once I successfully speak up in a crowd, I can sometimes feel like I glanced off, that the contact was shortlived. I went to the NY Solstice last year, and despite having a really good time and meeting a bunch of people, I have to admit I haven’t kept up any of those contacts like I’d hoped would happen.
I think a solution might be something like differentiating your warm fuzzies and your effective altruism. Lets keep Less Wrong’s quality filter about where it is, while sometimes using it as a common place from which to spin off fun groups if we want. And, in the interests of attempting a solution- If you’d like to do some overwatch or play some D&D*, I’m game. I suspect an open invite to a tabletop game on the open thread wouldn’t be badly received, and I’ve actually been considering that as a very low scale version of the community building efforts.
*I’m using D&D as a generic term here. I’d actually probably reach for Dungeon World, Exalted, or Chuubo’s before I went for Dungeons & Dragons proper.
I feel a LessWrong corporation in Eve would be a very interesting experiment.
This is one of those cases where “interesting” is usefully ambiguous between good and bad, isn’t it?
:-)
I expect you’d get, um, meaningful results. You are not guaranteed to like them.
If you failed you’d want to distinguish between (a) rationalism sucking, (b) your rationalism sucking, or (c) EVE already being full of rationalists.
Whether or not success in Eve is relevant outside Eve is debatable, but I think the complexity, politics and intense competition means that it would be hard to find a better online proving ground.