Is the rationalist community still growing? Offline, I guess it depends on the country. In Bratislava, where I live, it seems that ~ no one cares about rationality. Or effective altruism. Or Astral Codex Ten. Having five people at a meetup is a big success. Nearby Vienna is doing better, but it is merely climbing back to pre-COVID levels, not growing. Perhaps it is better at some other parts of the world.
I think that starting things that are hard forks of the lesswrong memeplex might be beneficial to being able to grow. Raising the sanity waterline would need to go memetic to work—and so would need to engage directly with raising the memetic sanity waterline. To do that, it probably would need to deeply forgo branding. For example, in a recent discussion about effective altruism, I made the point that I care nil about the “effective altruism” brand, and if that brand is dead, so be it. I care about effectively causing a better world. Anything that morphs into a brand rather than description is lost purpose, and so I think things that are designed to change names if their name becomes a brand might be more effective. I’ve been considering writing a post about this but I think my writing style tends to be a bit … messy … to get upvoted here.
I think that starting things that are hard forks of the lesswrong memeplex might be beneficial to being able to grow. Raising the sanity waterline would need to go memetic to work—and so would need to engage directly with raising the memetic sanity waterline. To do that, it probably would need to deeply forgo branding. For example, in a recent discussion about effective altruism, I made the point that I care nil about the “effective altruism” brand, and if that brand is dead, so be it. I care about effectively causing a better world. Anything that morphs into a brand rather than description is lost purpose, and so I think things that are designed to change names if their name becomes a brand might be more effective. I’ve been considering writing a post about this but I think my writing style tends to be a bit … messy … to get upvoted here.
Please do. I’ve been mulling over related half-digested thoughts—replacing the symbol / brand with the substance, etc.