Also, where would we send them? I think that if we’re going to do any kind of outreach we should set up a good subsidiary forum, to try and minimize Eternal September effects.
(As a model, the HPMoR subreddit seems to be something like this (albeit with a narrower focus) for a lot of people. The Less Wrong Lounge or something, maybe?)
I’ve long been of the opinion that Less Wrong itself is weird enough to be offputting to a lot of people, but it’s not the only obvious landing page any more. You could point people to Less Wrong or CFAR or Effective Altruism, or to the discourse-o-sphere for which SSC is an exemplar, or whatever other places I’ve forgotten. Hell, a reading list with a dozen popular books would be enough for the drive-by inquisitive lay-person.
Also, where would we send them? I think that if we’re going to do any kind of outreach we should set up a good subsidiary forum, to try and minimize Eternal September effects.
(As a model, the HPMoR subreddit seems to be something like this (albeit with a narrower focus) for a lot of people. The Less Wrong Lounge or something, maybe?)
I’ve long been of the opinion that Less Wrong itself is weird enough to be offputting to a lot of people, but it’s not the only obvious landing page any more. You could point people to Less Wrong or CFAR or Effective Altruism, or to the discourse-o-sphere for which SSC is an exemplar, or whatever other places I’ve forgotten. Hell, a reading list with a dozen popular books would be enough for the drive-by inquisitive lay-person.
What’s SSC? I doubt it’s one of these.
Others have already explained what it stands for and provided a link; it may be worth adding that the author of that blog is also known on LW as Yvain, who once upon a time was one of the best and most prolific LW contributors; his particularly highly rated posts include one on the notion of “disease”, one about metacontrarianism, one clarifying what it means when a model says something is almost certainly true, one on efficient charity, one introducing prospect theory, one about buying houses, one about Schelling fences, one about the worst argument in the world. (He’s still one of the best but participates rather little.) He’s also the guy who does the annual Less Wrong survey.
Yeah. I actually have read a fair bit of Yvain’s blog. I just had never thought of abbreviating its name before, so I blanked when I saw “SSC.”
That said, I am sure a lot of other readers of this thread may not have known about Yvain’s contributions.
Especially new readers who might find LW to abstract ;) It’s good to avoid using too much abbreviations.
http://slatestarcodex.com/
Thanks.
SlateStarCodex.
I think it’s usually written with spaces, though.
All excellent points. Now that I think about it, in practice I’m pretty sure I direct people more towards SSC.