The goal here isn’t to spread the rationality meme—it’s to figure out whether “rationality” is a good word to use to describe the set of ideas contained within the rationality meme.
Methods of Rationality and the Game of Life are only interesting to a narrow portion of the population. My dad’s a rational guy and I thought he’d like Methods of Rationality—he hated it. The people who’ve liked it that I’ve shown it to are almost exactly in my demographic − 20 something males who already nerdy, geeky, and have similar sense of humor to me.
I think Rationality is important enough that we should not be limiting ourselves to that demographic. At the very least it warrants our consideration.
I’m thinking of doing a followup post that takes a step back and talks about the questions I set aside in my first paragraph, to discuss the overall problem more thoroughly before getting too attached to particular solutions.
I’ve had mostly negative reactions to Methods of Rationality from 20-something males (and a few females) who are nerdy and geeky and mostly already like GEB, so I agree that this community needs other methods of marketing.
Reaction to Methods seems highly polarized: almost every review of it I’ve seen either falls over itself to gush or sees it as pretentious and self-indulgent. Age and gender seem to matter less, by that stage, than contrarian tendencies and tolerance for what tvtropes calls an author tract, but the demographics of fanfiction readers are weighted heavily towards people in their teens and twenties already, so samples of older readers are small. The particular characteristics of Methods do probably push it towards the older end of the scale.
Since that’s more or less the demographic that LW attracts already, I’d say that Methods, and the rational fic meme more generally, are effective as advertising but ineffective in broadening the site’s appeal.
Your first paragraph rings true to me: the complaints I’ve heard are basically those you mentioned.
My friends are mostly fairly contrarian late-twenties male engineering, computing science and math people. I think that apart from not enjoying Methods, they’re pretty much the usual LW demographic. That’s part of the reason I was surprised when they didn’t like Methods. There are lots of possible reasons for this (to me) surprising result. Maybe they thought I didn’t like it, and wanted to mirror that back. Maybe they’re a group already biased against LW. Maybe they actually just dislike the writing style. Who knows? If they don’t enjoy Eliezer’s writing style, then maybe LW is not a good place for them to hang out, so it doesn’t matter that it didn’t work as advertising on them.
Do you think that LW doesn’t need other methods of marketing?
There are people on Less Wrong who dislike Methods. But I suspect Eliezer’s other book will do a decent job of attracting those that don’t like cock!Harry.
20 something males who already nerdy, geeky, and have similar sense of humor to me.
You can add 20-30-something females that are nerdy, geeky and probably have a similar sense of humour to you ;)
I have a minimum of two data points for that demographic ;)
That being said—I agree it should not be our only avenue or our only target demographic. But even if we expand readership/membership in just the geek demographic we can considerably improve our numbers.
The goal here isn’t to spread the rationality meme—it’s to figure out whether “rationality” is a good word to use to describe the set of ideas contained within the rationality meme.
Methods of Rationality and the Game of Life are only interesting to a narrow portion of the population. My dad’s a rational guy and I thought he’d like Methods of Rationality—he hated it. The people who’ve liked it that I’ve shown it to are almost exactly in my demographic − 20 something males who already nerdy, geeky, and have similar sense of humor to me.
I think Rationality is important enough that we should not be limiting ourselves to that demographic. At the very least it warrants our consideration.
I’m thinking of doing a followup post that takes a step back and talks about the questions I set aside in my first paragraph, to discuss the overall problem more thoroughly before getting too attached to particular solutions.
I’ve had mostly negative reactions to Methods of Rationality from 20-something males (and a few females) who are nerdy and geeky and mostly already like GEB, so I agree that this community needs other methods of marketing.
Reaction to Methods seems highly polarized: almost every review of it I’ve seen either falls over itself to gush or sees it as pretentious and self-indulgent. Age and gender seem to matter less, by that stage, than contrarian tendencies and tolerance for what tvtropes calls an author tract, but the demographics of fanfiction readers are weighted heavily towards people in their teens and twenties already, so samples of older readers are small. The particular characteristics of Methods do probably push it towards the older end of the scale.
Since that’s more or less the demographic that LW attracts already, I’d say that Methods, and the rational fic meme more generally, are effective as advertising but ineffective in broadening the site’s appeal.
Your first paragraph rings true to me: the complaints I’ve heard are basically those you mentioned.
My friends are mostly fairly contrarian late-twenties male engineering, computing science and math people. I think that apart from not enjoying Methods, they’re pretty much the usual LW demographic. That’s part of the reason I was surprised when they didn’t like Methods. There are lots of possible reasons for this (to me) surprising result. Maybe they thought I didn’t like it, and wanted to mirror that back. Maybe they’re a group already biased against LW. Maybe they actually just dislike the writing style. Who knows? If they don’t enjoy Eliezer’s writing style, then maybe LW is not a good place for them to hang out, so it doesn’t matter that it didn’t work as advertising on them.
Do you think that LW doesn’t need other methods of marketing?
There are people on Less Wrong who dislike Methods. But I suspect Eliezer’s other book will do a decent job of attracting those that don’t like cock!Harry.
I’m a 50-something woman, and pretty fond of Methods. I like the earlier (more contrarian) parts best.
You can add 20-30-something females that are nerdy, geeky and probably have a similar sense of humour to you ;)
I have a minimum of two data points for that demographic ;)
That being said—I agree it should not be our only avenue or our only target demographic. But even if we expand readership/membership in just the geek demographic we can considerably improve our numbers.