I’m tired of matter-of-fact articles. The reason my wife is so reluctant to read the things I send her is because the finds the writing boring. I’m all in favor of rhetorical devices that spice up the writing, as long as they don’t confuse the reader as to what’s actually being said. You know what website writes about errors in thinking and gets a lot more traffic than Less Wrong? Cracked.com. I’m not saying that Cracked does as good or as complete a job of talking about biases, but they do keep people interested in coming back to read about things they’re mistaken about, and they do it by being funny.
Yes! The amount of rational awareness that people seem to pick up from Cracked is astounding. But the majority of their material is simply humor that has little to do with rationality and is only marginally educational.
Agreed. I’m certainly not advocating that we abandon LessWrong and count on Cracked to raise the sanity waterline, nor am I advocating that LW posts be filled with profanity, pop-culture references, and humorously-captioned photos (maybe a FEW photos). I just wouldn’t mind seeing posts that took themselves a LITTLE less seriously and were a little less stuffy and a little more accessible. Maybe some of the Sequences should have humorous summaries written so that casual readers can absorb the rough outline of the ideas and hopefully be pulled in gently.
Ah, I see. “Matter of fact,” in my post, was code for not making unwarranted assumptions about the reader and eliminating all the beating around the bush. I didn’t mean “try to be as boring as possible.”
I learnt more history from Cracked than from all other sources put together, and my country thinks it’s very important to make all kids sit through twelve years of history classes.
I’m tired of matter-of-fact articles. The reason my wife is so reluctant to read the things I send her is because the finds the writing boring. I’m all in favor of rhetorical devices that spice up the writing, as long as they don’t confuse the reader as to what’s actually being said. You know what website writes about errors in thinking and gets a lot more traffic than Less Wrong? Cracked.com. I’m not saying that Cracked does as good or as complete a job of talking about biases, but they do keep people interested in coming back to read about things they’re mistaken about, and they do it by being funny.
Yes! The amount of rational awareness that people seem to pick up from Cracked is astounding. But the majority of their material is simply humor that has little to do with rationality and is only marginally educational.
Agreed. I’m certainly not advocating that we abandon LessWrong and count on Cracked to raise the sanity waterline, nor am I advocating that LW posts be filled with profanity, pop-culture references, and humorously-captioned photos (maybe a FEW photos). I just wouldn’t mind seeing posts that took themselves a LITTLE less seriously and were a little less stuffy and a little more accessible. Maybe some of the Sequences should have humorous summaries written so that casual readers can absorb the rough outline of the ideas and hopefully be pulled in gently.
Ah, I see. “Matter of fact,” in my post, was code for not making unwarranted assumptions about the reader and eliminating all the beating around the bush. I didn’t mean “try to be as boring as possible.”
I learnt more history from Cracked than from all other sources put together, and my country thinks it’s very important to make all kids sit through twelve years of history classes.
Not trying to rebut you, just thought this was very relevant and might interest you. http://www.cracked.com/article_19468_5-logical-fallacies-that-make-you-wrong-more-than-you-think.html
Yes Robert made a subthread about it here.