If you’ve already pointed them to Three Worlds and HPMR and they are interested, they will likely start poking around themselves. So, unless they’ve asked specifically for suggestions, it isn’t clear to me that such suggestions are a good idea.
Assuming they have shown that they are amenable to such suggestions, one slightly Dark Artish but potentially useful idea is to send them first to things they are more likely to agree with. So for example, if they are an agnostic or atheist, sending them to the religion related posts (like the Mysterious Answers sequence) will get them more likely to feel that the website is worth reading. This is because they will be exposed to a combination of arguments they’ve seen versions of before and ones they have not seen before and all those arguments will likely support their pre-existing viewpoint. This is a very effective way of making people sympathetic and willing to read more.
I recently introduced a friend to HPMR and she went on to discover Less Wrong entirely of her own accord. She has explicitly cited it as sparking her interest in things like Bayesian inference, which she would never have considered learning about before.
You’re probably correct in your first point, I should introspect on why my first instinct was to manage their experience myself. I am concerned that a randomly selected article might put them off for the reasons I mentioned above.
Your second suggestion is likely to be extremely effective from the sounds of it. I wouldn’t worry about the dark arts elements, if we are finding areas they are interested in already, and they are already rationalist-ish they will likely agree with the main points anyway, and be impressed by the overall structure.
If you’ve already pointed them to Three Worlds and HPMR and they are interested, they will likely start poking around themselves. So, unless they’ve asked specifically for suggestions, it isn’t clear to me that such suggestions are a good idea.
Assuming they have shown that they are amenable to such suggestions, one slightly Dark Artish but potentially useful idea is to send them first to things they are more likely to agree with. So for example, if they are an agnostic or atheist, sending them to the religion related posts (like the Mysterious Answers sequence) will get them more likely to feel that the website is worth reading. This is because they will be exposed to a combination of arguments they’ve seen versions of before and ones they have not seen before and all those arguments will likely support their pre-existing viewpoint. This is a very effective way of making people sympathetic and willing to read more.
I recently introduced a friend to HPMR and she went on to discover Less Wrong entirely of her own accord. She has explicitly cited it as sparking her interest in things like Bayesian inference, which she would never have considered learning about before.
That’s devious and awesome.
I can give a data point in favor of this approach: I’ve gotten at least one person to view this site (and even link to it on a few occasions) by showing them pages of interest; specifically of interest to them were “37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong”, the “The Neglected Virtue of Scholarship” and “The Best Textbooks on Every Subject”. This person was an atheist with a predilection for autodidactism.
You’re probably correct in your first point, I should introspect on why my first instinct was to manage their experience myself. I am concerned that a randomly selected article might put them off for the reasons I mentioned above.
Your second suggestion is likely to be extremely effective from the sounds of it. I wouldn’t worry about the dark arts elements, if we are finding areas they are interested in already, and they are already rationalist-ish they will likely agree with the main points anyway, and be impressed by the overall structure.