Yes! Community matters. The support and friendship my folks get from their church is so intense, so useful to them, that I stopped trying to talk ’em out of their religion when I understood it. Unless you can replace that, give them that support and encouragement they got when my brother went schizophrenic say, you may well do them a disservice by talking them out of their religion even it if were possible.
Personally I get mine from a few places. The subgenii thing doesn’t really work well enough, there’s maybe two dozen of us active here in the whole continent. We can do about two get-togethers a year and have to fly in cross continental airplanes to do it. Lucky if half of us turn up at one one event. If you don’t also happen to be a heavy drinker you’re probably not going to fit in all that well either. The fact it’s so focused against something rather than for something can also be tricky. It’s deliberately exclusive.
More useful to me is the art community. The four nine one gallery even have a building. Squatted, of course. Nobody involved there has enough money to buy or even rent a building. The entire ethos of the folks who originally squatted that building was to use that previously unused space to encourage community projects. They use it for parties and for yoga classes and for drawing classes and there’s a cafe. There’s always people moving through, using the space. We’ll be using it for this years subgenius party come X-Day. They’re some of the most accepting friendly people I know. Having accepting, friendly leaders is surely important.
Another friend is in the process, this week even, of arranging a peppercorn rent with a landlord to move into and renovate a dilapidated building over five years, using it as a community center in the mean time. I expect I’ll do what I can to help, but I’m busy and it’s quite far from where I live.
Planet Angelaim to have a building, and to use it for similar purposes. We run monthly clubbing events to try and build that community and raise the cash to get a building through official channels rather than squatting. Well over half my friendship circle have come to me though PA over the last seven or eight years. The key to that being anything other than just another night club is the lack of any advertising. Spreading through word of mouth means ‘like minded’ people are the only people that come. You don’t get so much of the idiot trendy clubbing crowd that could destroy the friendly atmosphere. We try to organize bring-the-whole-family events a few times a year too, the night-clubbing thing is pretty restrictive if you really want to build a community.
The thing all these projects (except the subgenii one) have in common, the thing that drives whatever amount of success we’re getting, is acceptance though. None of them would work at all if we tried to include only rationalists, only the smart, only the top 5% intellectually. Indeed, they all (including the subgenii thing) include people with weird ideas about reality, people who aren’t all that smart, people who’d be bored reading lesswrong in about two minutes flat.
I think this is a good thing too. It’s pointless to be a lone rationalist, or an exclusive group. You gotta find some way to preach to the masses, and that’s only going to happen if you accept the masses, and give them that community they’re after, fill the community hole in their brains that people seem to find particularly hard to fill in big cities.
Yet you also can’t afford to grow so quickly that the group-norms are washed away, flooded with the wider society’s norms.
Surely you mean “a lone altruist”. A lone rationalist can be very successful. Sorry about the nitpick, but Eliezer has recently been trying to conflate the two words for whatever aims.
Well, I meant that being a lone rationist doesn’t spread rationalism, essentially. If that’s the motive, you need to be more accepting of those that aren’t in order to move them towards the path.
You’ve nailed exactly what worries me in your comment and the original post. You see, belief systems that aim for self-propagation are prone to turn really icky over time. A scientist doesn’t want above all else to spread the scientific worldview, a painter doesn’t set out to make everyone else paint, even a pickup artist has no desire to make all males alphas—they all have other, concrete goals; but religious or political views have to be viral. There’s any number of movements whose adherents have a priority of spreading the word, and right now I can’t think of a single such movement I’d want to be associated with.
Like violence, there are understandable reasons to be squeamish about evangelism, but if you forswear it, you hand victory to those who do not.
Rather than not talk about it, we should analyse the bad consequences we fear from evangelism, and try to figure out how to get the good things while avoiding the bad things. This may not have been done before, but it would be a mistake to be so stuck on the outside view that you come to believe that only what has already been done is possible.
My examples indicate it’s not necessary to hand victory to others. Science didn’t spread due to evangelism, science spread because it works. Art spreads because people love it. This is the standard we should be holding ourselves to.
Evangelism is the equivalent of proactive sales with an inferior product. A good evangelist/salesman can push through negative-sum deals, actually destroying total value in the world. If you’ve spent time in the IT industry, you recognize this picture.
Eliezer said repeatedly that rationalists should WIN. Great, now won’t anyone take this phrase seriously? I don’t want a rationalist technique to make myself pure from racism or somesuch crap. I want a rationalist technique to WIN. Fo’ real. Develop it, and the world will beat a path to your door.
Right now you (we) have no product, and preaching is no substitute.
I have to say that I’m really enjoying lesswrong.com so far; so much of this is the sort of conversation I want to be having. I’m not convinced, I’m thinking about it, but you should make a top-level post about this, it would benefit from having more people in the discussion.
There’s any number of movements whose adherents have a priority of spreading the word, and right now I can’t think of a single such movement I’d want to be associated with.
Innit. Personally I think I get more out of a community with a wide range of views anyway.
None of them would work at all if we tried to include only rationalists, only the smart, only the top 5% intellectually.
Mensa works adequately. “Only the top 5%” and even “only the top 2%” really isn’t all that exclusive. In fact, compared to typical social barriers to entry, Mensa’s simple one of test is the epitome of inclusiveness. At least, it is for those smarter than they are charming.
I’ve never been to a mensa meeting. On the web they seem to do little other than congratulate each other for being so smart. Do they do more when they meet in meatspace?
I attended a Mensa meeting. It seemed around the level of a small regional science-fiction convention. Not really enough for me to have conversations with people.
I went to Orbital 2008 in London largely in the hope of having such conversations, and despite IIRC 1500 attendees I found it a lot harder than I had hoped. I suspect that I could do better in future by making more advance effort to find the right people and bring them together; I’m inclined to try to do so for Orbital 2010.
Yes! Community matters. The support and friendship my folks get from their church is so intense, so useful to them, that I stopped trying to talk ’em out of their religion when I understood it. Unless you can replace that, give them that support and encouragement they got when my brother went schizophrenic say, you may well do them a disservice by talking them out of their religion even it if were possible.
Personally I get mine from a few places. The subgenii thing doesn’t really work well enough, there’s maybe two dozen of us active here in the whole continent. We can do about two get-togethers a year and have to fly in cross continental airplanes to do it. Lucky if half of us turn up at one one event. If you don’t also happen to be a heavy drinker you’re probably not going to fit in all that well either. The fact it’s so focused against something rather than for something can also be tricky. It’s deliberately exclusive.
More useful to me is the art community. The four nine one gallery even have a building. Squatted, of course. Nobody involved there has enough money to buy or even rent a building. The entire ethos of the folks who originally squatted that building was to use that previously unused space to encourage community projects. They use it for parties and for yoga classes and for drawing classes and there’s a cafe. There’s always people moving through, using the space. We’ll be using it for this years subgenius party come X-Day. They’re some of the most accepting friendly people I know. Having accepting, friendly leaders is surely important.
Another friend is in the process, this week even, of arranging a peppercorn rent with a landlord to move into and renovate a dilapidated building over five years, using it as a community center in the mean time. I expect I’ll do what I can to help, but I’m busy and it’s quite far from where I live.
Planet Angel aim to have a building, and to use it for similar purposes. We run monthly clubbing events to try and build that community and raise the cash to get a building through official channels rather than squatting. Well over half my friendship circle have come to me though PA over the last seven or eight years. The key to that being anything other than just another night club is the lack of any advertising. Spreading through word of mouth means ‘like minded’ people are the only people that come. You don’t get so much of the idiot trendy clubbing crowd that could destroy the friendly atmosphere. We try to organize bring-the-whole-family events a few times a year too, the night-clubbing thing is pretty restrictive if you really want to build a community.
The thing all these projects (except the subgenii one) have in common, the thing that drives whatever amount of success we’re getting, is acceptance though. None of them would work at all if we tried to include only rationalists, only the smart, only the top 5% intellectually. Indeed, they all (including the subgenii thing) include people with weird ideas about reality, people who aren’t all that smart, people who’d be bored reading lesswrong in about two minutes flat.
I think this is a good thing too. It’s pointless to be a lone rationalist, or an exclusive group. You gotta find some way to preach to the masses, and that’s only going to happen if you accept the masses, and give them that community they’re after, fill the community hole in their brains that people seem to find particularly hard to fill in big cities.
Yet you also can’t afford to grow so quickly that the group-norms are washed away, flooded with the wider society’s norms.
It’s a tricky problem
Surely you mean “a lone altruist”. A lone rationalist can be very successful. Sorry about the nitpick, but Eliezer has recently been trying to conflate the two words for whatever aims.
Well, I meant that being a lone rationist doesn’t spread rationalism, essentially. If that’s the motive, you need to be more accepting of those that aren’t in order to move them towards the path.
You’ve nailed exactly what worries me in your comment and the original post. You see, belief systems that aim for self-propagation are prone to turn really icky over time. A scientist doesn’t want above all else to spread the scientific worldview, a painter doesn’t set out to make everyone else paint, even a pickup artist has no desire to make all males alphas—they all have other, concrete goals; but religious or political views have to be viral. There’s any number of movements whose adherents have a priority of spreading the word, and right now I can’t think of a single such movement I’d want to be associated with.
Like violence, there are understandable reasons to be squeamish about evangelism, but if you forswear it, you hand victory to those who do not.
Rather than not talk about it, we should analyse the bad consequences we fear from evangelism, and try to figure out how to get the good things while avoiding the bad things. This may not have been done before, but it would be a mistake to be so stuck on the outside view that you come to believe that only what has already been done is possible.
My examples indicate it’s not necessary to hand victory to others. Science didn’t spread due to evangelism, science spread because it works. Art spreads because people love it. This is the standard we should be holding ourselves to.
Evangelism is the equivalent of proactive sales with an inferior product. A good evangelist/salesman can push through negative-sum deals, actually destroying total value in the world. If you’ve spent time in the IT industry, you recognize this picture.
Eliezer said repeatedly that rationalists should WIN. Great, now won’t anyone take this phrase seriously? I don’t want a rationalist technique to make myself pure from racism or somesuch crap. I want a rationalist technique to WIN. Fo’ real. Develop it, and the world will beat a path to your door.
Right now you (we) have no product, and preaching is no substitute.
I have to say that I’m really enjoying lesswrong.com so far; so much of this is the sort of conversation I want to be having. I’m not convinced, I’m thinking about it, but you should make a top-level post about this, it would benefit from having more people in the discussion.
Thanks for the encouragement! I wrote it up, should show under Recent Posts.
Innit. Personally I think I get more out of a community with a wide range of views anyway.
Mensa works adequately. “Only the top 5%” and even “only the top 2%” really isn’t all that exclusive. In fact, compared to typical social barriers to entry, Mensa’s simple one of test is the epitome of inclusiveness. At least, it is for those smarter than they are charming.
I’ve never been to a mensa meeting. On the web they seem to do little other than congratulate each other for being so smart. Do they do more when they meet in meatspace?
Really? I’ve seen them spend more time insulting each other for being so stupid. :P
Yes, from what I’ve seen. However, I’m somewhat out of the typical age bracket so haven’t involved myself all that much. Ask me in 10 years.
I attended a Mensa meeting. It seemed around the level of a small regional science-fiction convention. Not really enough for me to have conversations with people.
I went to Orbital 2008 in London largely in the hope of having such conversations, and despite IIRC 1500 attendees I found it a lot harder than I had hoped. I suspect that I could do better in future by making more advance effort to find the right people and bring them together; I’m inclined to try to do so for Orbital 2010.