Several people I’ve tried to introduce the site to have been turned off at the title: they interpreted “Less Wrong” to mean something akin to “We are a community of arrogant internet atheists who are Less Wrong than all of those stupid people”.
I believe the potshots at religion in major articles also fed into this view for at least one person; he was interested in some of the articles, but used those potshots and selected comments to argue that the community was terrible. He now is interested in many of the ideas, but is semi-actively opposed to the community (e.g. he’ll say derogatory things about it if it’s brought up.)
In it’s current form, I think the site is dangerous to share with anyone who is (a) religious or sensitive to poking fun at religion, or (b) cynical with regard to “atheist communities” which is what LessWrong is at risk of pattern matching as. I’d love to have a good resource for sharing rationality with those friends, although for some of them the well of “rationality” is poisoned by their negative associations with Less Wrong.
Several people I’ve tried to introduce the site to have been turned off at the title: they interpreted “Less Wrong” to mean something akin to “We are a community of arrogant internet atheists who are Less Wrong than all of those stupid people”.
I believe the potshots at religion in major articles also fed into this view for at least one person; he was interested in some of the articles, but used those potshots and selected comments to argue that the community was terrible. He now is interested in many of the ideas, but is semi-actively opposed to the community (e.g. he’ll say derogatory things about it if it’s brought up.)
In it’s current form, I think the site is dangerous to share with anyone who is (a) religious or sensitive to poking fun at religion, or (b) cynical with regard to “atheist communities” which is what LessWrong is at risk of pattern matching as. I’d love to have a good resource for sharing rationality with those friends, although for some of them the well of “rationality” is poisoned by their negative associations with Less Wrong.