Maybe this is off-base, but it seems like a lot of the people who one might want to preach rationality evangelism to, like liberal science-supporting policy-makers and upper-class liberals are very wary of anything that sounds like prosthelytizing (I am not talking about atheist technophiles who haven’t found LW yet. That’s an easier audience). A lot of them are vague atheists/agnostics who have a vague sense that extreme doctrines about a vastly different future for the human race are scary and weird and fanatical. I think they would strongly reject religious evangelicals, and likewise an evangelical-seeming approach might backfire on them. Which is not to say that some evangelical techniques might not be helpful, just that they would have to be tweaked to fit liberal cultural norms (not sound too threatening, be introduced in a friendly rather than authoritative way, etc.)
I have been wondering about a large-scale attempt by LWers to write layperson-appropriate articles about LW topics in widely read media sources (Huffpo, Vice, Wired, maybe Cracked). Speaking as an ex-agnostic liberal, I found it very difficult to find LW, and really figure out what it was about, with almost no prior knowledge of most of the topics. If I had casually heard about transhumanism or existential risk, I would have looked up more about it (I know this, because that’s what happened, eventually). I’ve never had luck introducing anyone to LW directly, but have been able to by sending them through HPMOR or some Peter Singer talks.
Maybe this is off-base, but it seems like a lot of the people who one might want to preach rationality evangelism to, like liberal science-supporting policy-makers and upper-class liberals are very wary of anything that sounds like prosthelytizing
You target the people who are now at university and do the policy in ten or twenty years.
Them too, although I think they (social science and liberal arts majors from rich families at top schools, maybe?) would have similar reaction.
There a lot in that sentence. It’s basically that you don’t expect the kind of people reached by LW to win and get in positions of power.
I don’t have the pessimism. I don’t think that pessimism is healthy.
The top donor for Obama’s political campaign was members of the University of California. Then people affiliated with Microsoft and Google on places two and three.
Given that’s were the money is, why give the money to elected somewhere who’s not from that memespace? It makes much more sense to funnel that money into politicians which come from the right background and get them elected.
If you are a rich 35 employee at a tech company than supporting that fellow who wants to run for office that you meet ten years ago at a LessWrong meetup makes more sense then funding some politician with a liberal arts background who doesn’t really push your agenda.
Don’t focus on winning people who are too far away. Focus on building a community of like minded people that has power.
It’s not exactly that I don’t think people on LW could win political power, but the impression I’ve gotten is that not very many are interested in it or have tried it. Working up through layers of government requires one to leverage a lot of very different skills than the ones emphasized on LW, which doesn’t mean LWers couldn’t do it but adds to the number of skills one would need to practice and excel at.
Sure, if you’re a rich techy, support an LW candidate, IF you can find one. Good luck with that. Politicians still need to win over the support of a political party, spend their time networking and building alliances with others in power, reaching out to a large constituency, etc. People doing that travel all the time and work exhaustingly long days. Are they going to go to an LW meetup in their spare time? I think it’s unlikely, and to my knowledge (and correct me if I’m wrong) it has not happened extensively in the past.
What expressed wasn’t pessimism. I think it would be both possible and productive to reach out to new memespaces (hopefully avoiding the term “memespace” in the process). Even if a huge fraction, say 20%, of the people on LW moved into political positions, that would still only be 320 (using the most recent survey results) scattered around the whole world (obviously concentrated in some areas).
I don’t think it is too bold to claim that the main memespace LW recruits from (youngish technophiles, mostly in America) have focused their lives thus far on different skills than the ones needed to reach political power. That’s not to say they can’t switch, but it makes it a little more difficult/unlikely.
ChristianKI, do you not think reaching out to other groups would be successful?
Edit: My main question is, do you think it is easier/more likely for a LWer to reach political power, or someone in power to be converted to LW? I think the latter would be easier if a LWer knew that person well.
It’s not exactly that I don’t think people on LW could win political power, but the impression I’ve gotten is that not very many are interested in it or have tried it.
I attended one local LW meetup till now. Out of less than 10 people there was one person with interest in a political career and I did my best to provide him an idea of how to go about starting it.
Even if a huge fraction, say 20%, of the people on LW moved into political positions, that would still only be 320 (using the most recent survey results) scattered around the whole world (obviously concentrated in some areas).
That basically means LW is too small at the moment and the community needs to grow in strength. I think that’s what’s important. Growing is easier when you focus on people that are easy to win for LW’s message. Smart colleague students who are likely to have resources in a decade because they are actually playing to win are good.
Politicians still need to win over the support of a political party, spend their time networking and building alliances with others in power, reaching out to a large constituency, etc.
In the US you need to raise enough money to buy television ads to win a district to get into congress. That means you have to network with people who are likely to fund your campaign.
If there are a lot of rich techies who aren’t really satisfied with the people whom they are at the moment giving their political donations, then building relationships with those rich techies would be the ideal way to network. I think it’s plausible that being at LW meetups is exactly the right place to be to network.
ChristianKI, do you not think reaching out to other groups would be successful?
At the start of wanting to create a Quantified Self (QS) community in Germany I chose to make the first meetups in German to reach a larger audience. That turned out to be a mistake. Nearly nobody that came did speak no English and quite a few people who move within the startup scene of Berlin speak no German and did come to English meetups.
We did make a point of emphasis that part of the idea of QS is having meetups while doing TV interviews, but most of the people that came to our meetups didn’t came because of mainstream media contact. The kind of people who are actually receptive to the idea are unlikely to watch much TV.
That doesn’t mean that I avoided speaking with mainstream media as it still reaches some people but the person who watches mainstream media programs just isn’t likely to go to a QS meetup.
I don’t think it is too bold to claim that the main memespace LW recruits from (youngish technophiles, mostly in America) have focused their lives thus far on different skills than the ones needed to reach political power.
I think there are quite a few people with a hacker mindset that make decent public speakers. Julian Assange did manage to tell a story that’s touching enough to bring tears to the eyes of nerds. As far as passionate speaking abilities I’m also a fan of Bre Pettis.
Your medium nerd doesn’t have high social skills but when you have someone who’s serious about developing skills I think that often produces good results.
I could see Bre Pettis running for president in one or two decades. He’s not a LW person but he does have strong community ties through being one of the founders of the Hacker Space NYC resistor.
ChristianKI, do you not think reaching out to other groups would be successful?
I don’t think that one should never reach out, but I think that’s often better to target your efforts closer at home. Think global act local.
Yes, if you have a good opportunity to get a liberal arts major to read HPMOR or explain him another concept take it. On the other hand don’t led that quest distract you from actually making your community a place where fellow members of the community feel great and want to come to every meetup.
liberal science-supporting policy-makers and upper-class liberals are very wary of anything that sounds like prosthelytizing
Do you really believe this?
From my egoist* perspective, progressives proselytize and worship all day long.
One small example, as seen on a coffee cup: ”Made from recyclable materials. It’s not just good tasting, it’s good for the environment.” They’ve turned buying a cup of coffee and throwing away the cup into a sacrament.
I think I see what you mean, but I would not consider that proselytizing. Or a sacrament. That seems more like really liking to signal that you care about the environment, and really not liking to feel guilty about drinking your cup of coffee.
When intense “tree-hugger” types tell them to throw away their cars and buy a cabin in the woods to save the environment, or lie down in the road in front of the trucks going to build the Keystone Pipeline, they usually nod awkwardly then go back to their lattes. Prosthelytizing and evangelism takes fervency and the commitment of resources. That’s not what I’ve seen from wealthy liberals so far.
And wearing a cross is signaling that you really love Jeebus, and going to confession and doing penance for your sins is really not liking feeling guilty about your sins.
Prosthelytizing and evangelism takes fervency and the commitment of resources.
Commitment of resources? No way. Besides time, proselytizing and evangelism only takes flapping your gums. That’s one of the reasons it’s such a popular past time—talk is cheap.
Maybe this is off-base, but it seems like a lot of the people who one might want to preach rationality evangelism to, like liberal science-supporting policy-makers and upper-class liberals are very wary of anything that sounds like prosthelytizing (I am not talking about atheist technophiles who haven’t found LW yet. That’s an easier audience). A lot of them are vague atheists/agnostics who have a vague sense that extreme doctrines about a vastly different future for the human race are scary and weird and fanatical. I think they would strongly reject religious evangelicals, and likewise an evangelical-seeming approach might backfire on them. Which is not to say that some evangelical techniques might not be helpful, just that they would have to be tweaked to fit liberal cultural norms (not sound too threatening, be introduced in a friendly rather than authoritative way, etc.)
I have been wondering about a large-scale attempt by LWers to write layperson-appropriate articles about LW topics in widely read media sources (Huffpo, Vice, Wired, maybe Cracked). Speaking as an ex-agnostic liberal, I found it very difficult to find LW, and really figure out what it was about, with almost no prior knowledge of most of the topics. If I had casually heard about transhumanism or existential risk, I would have looked up more about it (I know this, because that’s what happened, eventually). I’ve never had luck introducing anyone to LW directly, but have been able to by sending them through HPMOR or some Peter Singer talks.
You target the people who are now at university and do the policy in ten or twenty years.
Them too, although I think they (social science and liberal arts majors from rich families at top schools, maybe?) would have similar reaction.
There a lot in that sentence. It’s basically that you don’t expect the kind of people reached by LW to win and get in positions of power.
I don’t have the pessimism. I don’t think that pessimism is healthy.
The top donor for Obama’s political campaign was members of the University of California. Then people affiliated with Microsoft and Google on places two and three.
Given that’s were the money is, why give the money to elected somewhere who’s not from that memespace? It makes much more sense to funnel that money into politicians which come from the right background and get them elected.
If you are a rich 35 employee at a tech company than supporting that fellow who wants to run for office that you meet ten years ago at a LessWrong meetup makes more sense then funding some politician with a liberal arts background who doesn’t really push your agenda.
Don’t focus on winning people who are too far away. Focus on building a community of like minded people that has power.
It’s not exactly that I don’t think people on LW could win political power, but the impression I’ve gotten is that not very many are interested in it or have tried it. Working up through layers of government requires one to leverage a lot of very different skills than the ones emphasized on LW, which doesn’t mean LWers couldn’t do it but adds to the number of skills one would need to practice and excel at.
Sure, if you’re a rich techy, support an LW candidate, IF you can find one. Good luck with that. Politicians still need to win over the support of a political party, spend their time networking and building alliances with others in power, reaching out to a large constituency, etc. People doing that travel all the time and work exhaustingly long days. Are they going to go to an LW meetup in their spare time? I think it’s unlikely, and to my knowledge (and correct me if I’m wrong) it has not happened extensively in the past.
What expressed wasn’t pessimism. I think it would be both possible and productive to reach out to new memespaces (hopefully avoiding the term “memespace” in the process). Even if a huge fraction, say 20%, of the people on LW moved into political positions, that would still only be 320 (using the most recent survey results) scattered around the whole world (obviously concentrated in some areas).
I don’t think it is too bold to claim that the main memespace LW recruits from (youngish technophiles, mostly in America) have focused their lives thus far on different skills than the ones needed to reach political power. That’s not to say they can’t switch, but it makes it a little more difficult/unlikely.
ChristianKI, do you not think reaching out to other groups would be successful?
Edit: My main question is, do you think it is easier/more likely for a LWer to reach political power, or someone in power to be converted to LW? I think the latter would be easier if a LWer knew that person well.
I attended one local LW meetup till now. Out of less than 10 people there was one person with interest in a political career and I did my best to provide him an idea of how to go about starting it.
That basically means LW is too small at the moment and the community needs to grow in strength. I think that’s what’s important. Growing is easier when you focus on people that are easy to win for LW’s message. Smart colleague students who are likely to have resources in a decade because they are actually playing to win are good.
In the US you need to raise enough money to buy television ads to win a district to get into congress. That means you have to network with people who are likely to fund your campaign.
If there are a lot of rich techies who aren’t really satisfied with the people whom they are at the moment giving their political donations, then building relationships with those rich techies would be the ideal way to network. I think it’s plausible that being at LW meetups is exactly the right place to be to network.
At the start of wanting to create a Quantified Self (QS) community in Germany I chose to make the first meetups in German to reach a larger audience. That turned out to be a mistake. Nearly nobody that came did speak no English and quite a few people who move within the startup scene of Berlin speak no German and did come to English meetups.
We did make a point of emphasis that part of the idea of QS is having meetups while doing TV interviews, but most of the people that came to our meetups didn’t came because of mainstream media contact. The kind of people who are actually receptive to the idea are unlikely to watch much TV.
That doesn’t mean that I avoided speaking with mainstream media as it still reaches some people but the person who watches mainstream media programs just isn’t likely to go to a QS meetup.
I think there are quite a few people with a hacker mindset that make decent public speakers. Julian Assange did manage to tell a story that’s touching enough to bring tears to the eyes of nerds. As far as passionate speaking abilities I’m also a fan of Bre Pettis.
Your medium nerd doesn’t have high social skills but when you have someone who’s serious about developing skills I think that often produces good results.
I could see Bre Pettis running for president in one or two decades. He’s not a LW person but he does have strong community ties through being one of the founders of the Hacker Space NYC resistor.
I don’t think that one should never reach out, but I think that’s often better to target your efforts closer at home. Think global act local.
Yes, if you have a good opportunity to get a liberal arts major to read HPMOR or explain him another concept take it. On the other hand don’t led that quest distract you from actually making your community a place where fellow members of the community feel great and want to come to every meetup.
Do you really believe this?
From my egoist* perspective, progressives proselytize and worship all day long.
One small example, as seen on a coffee cup:
”Made from recyclable materials. It’s not just good tasting, it’s good for the environment.” They’ve turned buying a cup of coffee and throwing away the cup into a sacrament.
* egoist in the Stirnerite egoist tradition.
I think I see what you mean, but I would not consider that proselytizing. Or a sacrament. That seems more like really liking to signal that you care about the environment, and really not liking to feel guilty about drinking your cup of coffee.
When intense “tree-hugger” types tell them to throw away their cars and buy a cabin in the woods to save the environment, or lie down in the road in front of the trucks going to build the Keystone Pipeline, they usually nod awkwardly then go back to their lattes. Prosthelytizing and evangelism takes fervency and the commitment of resources. That’s not what I’ve seen from wealthy liberals so far.
And wearing a cross is signaling that you really love Jeebus, and going to confession and doing penance for your sins is really not liking feeling guilty about your sins.
Commitment of resources? No way. Besides time, proselytizing and evangelism only takes flapping your gums. That’s one of the reasons it’s such a popular past time—talk is cheap.