A related anecdote: Recent months I am translating Sequences to Slovak, because I expect written word to be more effective recruitment tool than my person; simply because my time doesn’t scale, but I can write put a free PDF online and link it from a blog or facebook or mention it in e-mail. (Also, I believe that Eliezer did think and discuss with other smart people about spreading rationality much more than me; so if he considered writing the Sequences an efficient use of his time, some of those reasons probably apply to using my time to translate it. Sure, the audience is much smaller, but so seem to be my opportunity costs, at least at this moment.)
So, I was talking with a friend, a religious girl, and although there is only epsilon chance of ever converting her, I told her about my already completed parts of translation anyway, simply because it didn’t cost me anything. And she was like: “Yeah, translating is cool. I am translating this book by Chesterton.” And I felt like: Damn, whatever tools of conversion I try, religion is already doing it, and much better. But then I realized I could treat this as an evidence that I am probably doing something that works, so it’s kind of a good news.
Maybe the existing religions are not as efficient as they could be, but they are still pretty damn impressive; probably hundred times more impressive than we even think they are. Also they have to solve problems with maintaining their power, preventing internal fights, defending against powerful external enemies who literally want to kill them; all of this at the same time, for centuries—the kind of problems most rationalists can’t even imagine yet, because we still sometimes have a problem with organizing regular meetups for dozen people. The more people you have in your movement, the more average is their average IQ, because there is just not enough high-quality material. To organize them into something meaningful; to allow them to contribute meaningfully to your goals, that’s a task of astronomic proportions. And the religions do it successfully—so I would be very humble at giving them an advice on how to do this even better. There certainly is an opportunity or two they have missed, but that’s because they are focusing on thousand other opportunities at the same time.
The fact that a girl who is nobody in the structure of our local Catholic church is doing an equivalent evangelism work as me, at this moment the most active LWer in my country… that feels like seeing a fraction of Omega and realizing that your life’s mental effort is equivalent to one of the many things that Omega keeps doing on pure instinct all the time, without even noticing. After this experience I feel totally unqualified to advice Omega about how to do its job better. (Would you like to make bets about which of these books has a higher probability to be sold in bookshops within the next five years; and if both are published, which one will have more readers and reviews? Even if they both had the same chance, that book by Chesterton is merely a drop in an ocean of similar literature. Although, diminishing returns, etc. And literature is just a part of the whole evangelizing system.)
I’m not sure that the target audience that can be won for LW that lives in Slovakia speaks no English.
My guess is that you would be more effective by putting more energy into your LW meetup and seeing that audiences like the computer science department of your local university know that the meetup takes place is more important. Put your energy into making the meetup great. A great meetup with people who like being at the meetup also gives you manpower.
Connections to the local university can help to have a good location to hold the meetup and be able to invite speakers on topics of rationality for interesting talks.
Berlin is a bit special but in Berlin I found that it makes more sense to hold a Quantified Self event in English than in German because more of the people in the target audience speak no German than there are people who speak no English.
Finally I believe that HPMOR is a much better recruitment tool than the sequences. If someone starts reading HPMOR they get hooked on it and spend a lot of time being exposed to our memes. Getting hooked at dense material like the sequences is harder.
HPMOR is the ideal entry material. If someone comes the first time to your meetup it might be a lot more efficient to get them hooked on HPMOR than to try to get them to read the Sequences.
I’m not sure that the target audience that can be won for LW that lives in Slovakia speaks no English.
Well, how else could I answer this question? But my expectation is that most people in the target audience will have English skills somewhere at level: “can read a longer text, but it’s uncomfortable, and wouldn’t decide to read hundreds of pages just for curiosity”. Translation can overcome an inconvenience for these people and possibly reach some other people.
(Fun fact: Out of curiosity, my Mom recently started reading my translation, and so far she seems to like it. Which I would never expect. She is completely not the audience I would try to reach. Well, I’ll see what happens when she gets to the “politics is the mindkiller” and the “quantum physics” parts. The book has a chance to reach an unexpected audience. And who knows, maybe she will forward the PDF to her friends. And somewhere along the chain a person I could never reach can be converted.)
And I completely agree that at this point it would be more efficient to find new audience at universities. Not sure how difficult it would be to find speakers on rationality-related topics. (Need to find out whether there is a local QS community.) I can use Czech HPMOR translation, local readers would understand it.
Back to my original point… the religions are already doing the equivalents of all of this, plus many other things. Your comment just made me feel even less qualified to give them an advice—though I appreciate your advice to me.
If I understand right you have a meetup that meets occasionally. What’s the level of English abilities of those people? What kind of people exist in your city that you want to have at your meetup and which would enjoy your meetup? What do other people at your meetup think about where you could find those people?
Another issue, why the medium of a PDF instead of a website with Google Analytics that can be founded via Google?
I can use Czech HPMOR translation, local readers would understand it.
I think that time spent on a HPMOR translation is likely to be higher utility than time spent on translating the sequences. However I don’t know whether it’s a good idea to translate HPMOR before it’s finished.
Eliezer often foreshadows events. Take the talk about the centaur in the first chapter:
And Lily would tell me no, and make up the most ridiculous excuses, like the world would end if she were nice to her sister, or a centaur told her not to—the most ridiculous things, and I hated her for it.
The interactions with the centaur in one of the last chapters got foreshadowed. It might be hard to translate the sentence I quote well without knowing what it’s supposed to foreshadow.
Back to my original point… the religions are already doing the equivalents of all of this, plus many other things.
Religions do a lot of that but when it comes down to it the average sermon is boring. We don’t have access to comparable manpower as religions but we can think more clearly about strategy then them. We don’t have to do busy work.
LW’s franchise model of meetups is good. Different cities can experiment with different strategies and we can talk together about what works. We don’t have to get everything right next year or even in the year afterwards.
If we just keep on improving there a good chance that the whole enterprise runs in ten years better than popular religions do. If we are better at learning from feedback about what works, we might just win in the long run.
Need to find out whether there is a local QS community.
&& I had here something about the Czech republic but I just noticed that you are from Slovenia
If I understand right you have a meetup that meets occasionally. What’s the level of English abilities of those people?
I don’t have precise data, but I estimate that of 10 people, 3 can’t speak English fluently, and at least one doesn’t speak English at all.
What kind of people exist in your city that you want to have at your meetup and which would enjoy your meetup? What do other people at your meetup think about where you could find those people?
These are good questions and we should probably have a separate meetup about this. (And probably a separate discussion on LW, because we are hijacking another debate here, but these things could also be useful for people in other places.)
why the medium of a PDF instead of a website with Google Analytics
At the end, I would like to have both. At this moment, I have the first 100 translated articles of the Sequences on my website… and it doesn’t seem to have any impact. Of course, there are things I could improve there, too.
I just noticed that you are from Slovenia
No, it’s Slovakia. We are 200 km away, and our flag has five different pixels. :D
There is a chance someone from Czech Republic would come here to make a lecture. And there is a big chance some people from Slovakia are debating on Czech web fora. Okay; I will contact the organizer of QS meetups in Prague, and he might give me other contacts.
EDIT: By “200 km away” I meant 200 km from Slovenia, but coincidentally it also happens to be 200 km from Germany (where ChristianKl is). However the difference of five pixels is only between the flags of Slovenia and Slovakia; well, depending on the resolution.
Interesting. Anecdotally, I got my father (who works in politics) interested specifically in “politics is the mindkiller.” I think it spoke to his experiences and concerns more than other sequences.
HPMOR will probably be more effective with youngish people who a) have read Harry Potter, b) are familiar with the concept of fanfiction and c) feel comfortable reading long documents on the internet. Seems a bit limiting, although still a very good tool.
Targeted quick reads are great! That’s one reason I like the quote threads so much—almost anyone will be fond of a few good rationality quotes, and that’s a good way to introduce them to specific LW material.
Well, how else could I answer this question? But my expectation is that most people in the target audience will > have English skills somewhere at level: “can read a longer text, but it’s uncomfortable, and wouldn’t decide to read hundreds of pages just for curiosity”. Translation can overcome an inconvenience for these people and possibly reach some other people.
Exactly. I’ve already disseminated some carefully selected translated Sequences to people who would not read the English original, because it is too uncomfortable (they would, if they had to), and I’ve got some positive feedback.
And I completely agree that at this point it would be more efficient to find new audience at universities.
Less time required to reach a given number of people who are going to join in, agreed. Yet the translation can help raise the sanity waterline of a group of people that would not even consider coming to a ‘rationality meetup’. I go to meetups because of the sequences, because it’s worth a three to five hour journey to hang out with people who share that.
Finally I believe that HPMOR is a much better recruitment tool than the sequences. If someone starts reading HPMOR they get hooked on it and spend a lot of time being exposed to our memes.
Yes. The sequences are a toolkit. HPMOR evokes emotions.
No one would have ever given two hoots about Objectivism if Rand hadn’t written novels and embedded her philosophy in them. Some people are moved by the fiction, and thereby associate with the memes.
Finally I believe that HPMOR is a much better recruitment tool than the sequences. If someone starts reading HPMOR they get hooked on it and spend a lot of time being exposed to our memes. Getting hooked at dense material like the sequences is harder.
The converse happened to me! (But I happened to find the sequences at a time when I was already like “yay Bayesian probability theory, boo cognitive biases”, and I knew hardly anything about canon HP beyond having watched the first film when it came out and fallen asleep while trying to watch the last one, so I’m not a representative sample of the population.)
A related anecdote: Recent months I am translating Sequences to Slovak, because I expect written word to be more effective recruitment tool than my person; simply because my time doesn’t scale, but I can write put a free PDF online and link it from a blog or facebook or mention it in e-mail. (Also, I believe that Eliezer did think and discuss with other smart people about spreading rationality much more than me; so if he considered writing the Sequences an efficient use of his time, some of those reasons probably apply to using my time to translate it. Sure, the audience is much smaller, but so seem to be my opportunity costs, at least at this moment.)
So, I was talking with a friend, a religious girl, and although there is only epsilon chance of ever converting her, I told her about my already completed parts of translation anyway, simply because it didn’t cost me anything. And she was like: “Yeah, translating is cool. I am translating this book by Chesterton.” And I felt like: Damn, whatever tools of conversion I try, religion is already doing it, and much better. But then I realized I could treat this as an evidence that I am probably doing something that works, so it’s kind of a good news.
Maybe the existing religions are not as efficient as they could be, but they are still pretty damn impressive; probably hundred times more impressive than we even think they are. Also they have to solve problems with maintaining their power, preventing internal fights, defending against powerful external enemies who literally want to kill them; all of this at the same time, for centuries—the kind of problems most rationalists can’t even imagine yet, because we still sometimes have a problem with organizing regular meetups for dozen people. The more people you have in your movement, the more average is their average IQ, because there is just not enough high-quality material. To organize them into something meaningful; to allow them to contribute meaningfully to your goals, that’s a task of astronomic proportions. And the religions do it successfully—so I would be very humble at giving them an advice on how to do this even better. There certainly is an opportunity or two they have missed, but that’s because they are focusing on thousand other opportunities at the same time.
The fact that a girl who is nobody in the structure of our local Catholic church is doing an equivalent evangelism work as me, at this moment the most active LWer in my country… that feels like seeing a fraction of Omega and realizing that your life’s mental effort is equivalent to one of the many things that Omega keeps doing on pure instinct all the time, without even noticing. After this experience I feel totally unqualified to advice Omega about how to do its job better. (Would you like to make bets about which of these books has a higher probability to be sold in bookshops within the next five years; and if both are published, which one will have more readers and reviews? Even if they both had the same chance, that book by Chesterton is merely a drop in an ocean of similar literature. Although, diminishing returns, etc. And literature is just a part of the whole evangelizing system.)
I’m not sure that the target audience that can be won for LW that lives in Slovakia speaks no English.
My guess is that you would be more effective by putting more energy into your LW meetup and seeing that audiences like the computer science department of your local university know that the meetup takes place is more important. Put your energy into making the meetup great. A great meetup with people who like being at the meetup also gives you manpower.
Connections to the local university can help to have a good location to hold the meetup and be able to invite speakers on topics of rationality for interesting talks.
Berlin is a bit special but in Berlin I found that it makes more sense to hold a Quantified Self event in English than in German because more of the people in the target audience speak no German than there are people who speak no English.
Finally I believe that HPMOR is a much better recruitment tool than the sequences. If someone starts reading HPMOR they get hooked on it and spend a lot of time being exposed to our memes. Getting hooked at dense material like the sequences is harder.
HPMOR is the ideal entry material. If someone comes the first time to your meetup it might be a lot more efficient to get them hooked on HPMOR than to try to get them to read the Sequences.
Well, how else could I answer this question? But my expectation is that most people in the target audience will have English skills somewhere at level: “can read a longer text, but it’s uncomfortable, and wouldn’t decide to read hundreds of pages just for curiosity”. Translation can overcome an inconvenience for these people and possibly reach some other people.
(Fun fact: Out of curiosity, my Mom recently started reading my translation, and so far she seems to like it. Which I would never expect. She is completely not the audience I would try to reach. Well, I’ll see what happens when she gets to the “politics is the mindkiller” and the “quantum physics” parts. The book has a chance to reach an unexpected audience. And who knows, maybe she will forward the PDF to her friends. And somewhere along the chain a person I could never reach can be converted.)
And I completely agree that at this point it would be more efficient to find new audience at universities. Not sure how difficult it would be to find speakers on rationality-related topics. (Need to find out whether there is a local QS community.) I can use Czech HPMOR translation, local readers would understand it.
Back to my original point… the religions are already doing the equivalents of all of this, plus many other things. Your comment just made me feel even less qualified to give them an advice—though I appreciate your advice to me.
If I understand right you have a meetup that meets occasionally. What’s the level of English abilities of those people? What kind of people exist in your city that you want to have at your meetup and which would enjoy your meetup? What do other people at your meetup think about where you could find those people?
Another issue, why the medium of a PDF instead of a website with Google Analytics that can be founded via Google?
I think that time spent on a HPMOR translation is likely to be higher utility than time spent on translating the sequences. However I don’t know whether it’s a good idea to translate HPMOR before it’s finished. Eliezer often foreshadows events. Take the talk about the centaur in the first chapter:
The interactions with the centaur in one of the last chapters got foreshadowed. It might be hard to translate the sentence I quote well without knowing what it’s supposed to foreshadow.
Religions do a lot of that but when it comes down to it the average sermon is boring. We don’t have access to comparable manpower as religions but we can think more clearly about strategy then them. We don’t have to do busy work.
LW’s franchise model of meetups is good. Different cities can experiment with different strategies and we can talk together about what works. We don’t have to get everything right next year or even in the year afterwards.
If we just keep on improving there a good chance that the whole enterprise runs in ten years better than popular religions do. If we are better at learning from feedback about what works, we might just win in the long run.
&& I had here something about the Czech republic but I just noticed that you are from Slovenia
I don’t have precise data, but I estimate that of 10 people, 3 can’t speak English fluently, and at least one doesn’t speak English at all.
These are good questions and we should probably have a separate meetup about this. (And probably a separate discussion on LW, because we are hijacking another debate here, but these things could also be useful for people in other places.)
At the end, I would like to have both. At this moment, I have the first 100 translated articles of the Sequences on my website… and it doesn’t seem to have any impact. Of course, there are things I could improve there, too.
No, it’s Slovakia. We are 200 km away, and our flag has five different pixels. :D
There is a chance someone from Czech Republic would come here to make a lecture. And there is a big chance some people from Slovakia are debating on Czech web fora. Okay; I will contact the organizer of QS meetups in Prague, and he might give me other contacts.
EDIT: By “200 km away” I meant 200 km from Slovenia, but coincidentally it also happens to be 200 km from Germany (where ChristianKl is). However the difference of five pixels is only between the flags of Slovenia and Slovakia; well, depending on the resolution.
Okay, in that case I understand the desire to translate material.
I really need to improve my understanding of East Europe ;)
Especially since people in Slovakia prefer to be called “Central Europe” :-)
Since from this point of view East Europe starts with Ukraina—and there is crime, mafia, poverty, hunger and an occasional civil war.
Interesting. Anecdotally, I got my father (who works in politics) interested specifically in “politics is the mindkiller.” I think it spoke to his experiences and concerns more than other sequences.
HPMOR will probably be more effective with youngish people who a) have read Harry Potter, b) are familiar with the concept of fanfiction and c) feel comfortable reading long documents on the internet. Seems a bit limiting, although still a very good tool.
Targeted quick reads are great! That’s one reason I like the quote threads so much—almost anyone will be fond of a few good rationality quotes, and that’s a good way to introduce them to specific LW material.
Exactly. I’ve already disseminated some carefully selected translated Sequences to people who would not read the English original, because it is too uncomfortable (they would, if they had to), and I’ve got some positive feedback.
Less time required to reach a given number of people who are going to join in, agreed. Yet the translation can help raise the sanity waterline of a group of people that would not even consider coming to a ‘rationality meetup’. I go to meetups because of the sequences, because it’s worth a three to five hour journey to hang out with people who share that.
Yes. The sequences are a toolkit. HPMOR evokes emotions.
No one would have ever given two hoots about Objectivism if Rand hadn’t written novels and embedded her philosophy in them. Some people are moved by the fiction, and thereby associate with the memes.
The converse happened to me! (But I happened to find the sequences at a time when I was already like “yay Bayesian probability theory, boo cognitive biases”, and I knew hardly anything about canon HP beyond having watched the first film when it came out and fallen asleep while trying to watch the last one, so I’m not a representative sample of the population.)