Part of the problem is that a lot of LW cultural dynamics are built around status competition but we don’t really have a lot of “rationality lessons” in the canon for redirecting such things very well as a group. The entire “rationality dojo” framing (with implications of pretend conflict and tournaments and ranking and so on) has always seems like it was strategically designed to appeal to people who are male and under 30. From a world saving perspective there’s a lot to say for the framing in terms of inspiring young men to do positive things with their passion and personal energy, but it also carries with it some of the problems I see in the existing comments...
With the dojo framing, you’ll tend to appeal to people who haven’t leveled up yet, but who want to, and some people who haven’t leveled up have a chip on their shoulder when they start out. This chip is visible in the sort of reaction that runs “How dare you you use word ‘elite’ without irony, as though to suggest there are people who are objectively more awesome than I am!” (And generally, I suspect there is at least sequence’s worth of content on the issues that were touched upon when The Level Above Mine was written but its complicated to talk about too much and I’m afraid to do much more than gently point in that direction for now.)
For what it is worth, when I read the title I was thinking you meant the goal was to find “people who are more awesome than even our highest status posters”. Like, how would we get Christof Koch to make an account and hang out for a bit? How do we get congress people to make accounts and hang out for a bit? And so on...
When Kaj reviewed their book I took the opportunity to help set up the Q&A with Harpending and Cochran. That seemed to work pretty well. Hanson even stooped to commenting on his sister blog, I think maybe because we had someone who it was profitable for him to interact with, and we were dealing in more empirical way than normal with moderately controversial and high impact questions. (Also, this suggests another optimization strategy: look at Hanson’s comments and figure out what made it worth his time to make the comment and then try to encourage more of that.)
The book Q&A could potentially work as a formula rather than a one time event: find new and interesting and somewhat controversial books. Have someone with a good mind and high karma write a solid intellectual review and then if the book is good enough for the review to be positive invite the author to come for a Q&A. Either highly managed “the top N comments will be answered at the author’s leisure later” or else by having the author create an account and get their hands dirty. Personally, I’d respect the dirty hands approach, but I could see how some authors might be intimidated by the prospect and maybe not think the payoff was worth the risk… it would be tricky to balance things I suspect...
Part of the problem with this strategy is that it would take non-trivial elbow grease applied to social networking, and social networking with strategic overtones is often exhausting… people generally don’t do bizdev for fun, but rather for a real salary. Maybe if some interaction with the authors was part of the role then a few volunteers could be found who were willing and able to do it?
Part of the problem is that a lot of LW cultural dynamics are built around status competition but we don’t really have a lot of “rationality lessons” in the canon for redirecting such things very well as a group. The entire “rationality dojo” framing (with implications of pretend conflict and tournaments and ranking and so on) has always seems like it was strategically designed to appeal to people who are male and under 30. From a world saving perspective there’s a lot to say for the framing in terms of inspiring young men to do positive things with their passion and personal energy, but it also carries with it some of the problems I see in the existing comments...
With the dojo framing, you’ll tend to appeal to people who haven’t leveled up yet, but who want to, and some people who haven’t leveled up have a chip on their shoulder when they start out. This chip is visible in the sort of reaction that runs “How dare you you use word ‘elite’ without irony, as though to suggest there are people who are objectively more awesome than I am!” (And generally, I suspect there is at least sequence’s worth of content on the issues that were touched upon when The Level Above Mine was written but its complicated to talk about too much and I’m afraid to do much more than gently point in that direction for now.)
For what it is worth, when I read the title I was thinking you meant the goal was to find “people who are more awesome than even our highest status posters”. Like, how would we get Christof Koch to make an account and hang out for a bit? How do we get congress people to make accounts and hang out for a bit? And so on...
When Kaj reviewed their book I took the opportunity to help set up the Q&A with Harpending and Cochran. That seemed to work pretty well. Hanson even stooped to commenting on his sister blog, I think maybe because we had someone who it was profitable for him to interact with, and we were dealing in more empirical way than normal with moderately controversial and high impact questions. (Also, this suggests another optimization strategy: look at Hanson’s comments and figure out what made it worth his time to make the comment and then try to encourage more of that.)
The book Q&A could potentially work as a formula rather than a one time event: find new and interesting and somewhat controversial books. Have someone with a good mind and high karma write a solid intellectual review and then if the book is good enough for the review to be positive invite the author to come for a Q&A. Either highly managed “the top N comments will be answered at the author’s leisure later” or else by having the author create an account and get their hands dirty. Personally, I’d respect the dirty hands approach, but I could see how some authors might be intimidated by the prospect and maybe not think the payoff was worth the risk… it would be tricky to balance things I suspect...
Part of the problem with this strategy is that it would take non-trivial elbow grease applied to social networking, and social networking with strategic overtones is often exhausting… people generally don’t do bizdev for fun, but rather for a real salary. Maybe if some interaction with the authors was part of the role then a few volunteers could be found who were willing and able to do it?