One exception: I disagree that identifying individuals whose association with LW would be mutually beneficial and encouraging that association is particularly hard to do in a targeted fashion online… I can find particular people and invite them to an online community, just as I can to a “meetspace” community. You seem to have jumped from “online” to “advertisements on websites” and I don’t really understand why.
Another exception: you say “we need to be hovering near the razor-edge that separates hollow-self-perpetuating organizations and actual good quality organizations, and actively remaining on that edge requires a lot of diligence and effort” I’m not sure we actually do need to be hovering near that edge. It might be OK for us to simply seek to be an actual good quality organization, and not devote much time or attention to self-perpetuation at all.
Regardless… in particular, I agree that it’s very easy for “we should behave in ways that cause people we want to be associated with to want to associate with us” to turn into “we should behave in ways that cause people to want to associate with us”—for nuance to get lost, as you say. Indeed, I think it’s happening: a non-negligible amount of recent discussion on related topics seems to me to fall in the latter category.
I was sort of rushing my conclusion and yeah, I agree with your assessment of my assessment. I think.
For the online thing, my brain leapt immediately to “most cost effective ways to recruit large numbers of people,” which wasn’t necessary. However, I didn’t just mean advertisements. I found Less Wrong though HP:MoR, but I was originally linked to THAT by a public discussion on a community forum. And I would have taken longer to make the transition if there hadn’t been additional discussion of Less Wrong itself on that forum.
This is more targeted than advertisements but less targeted than an individual recommendation. I also post particularly good articles on social media, which are in some ways even closer to advertisements. I don’t think a dedicated effort is required here, I think this kind of word-of-mouth is what would happen naturally.
It might be OK for us to simply seek to be an actual good quality organization, and not devote much time or attention to self-perpetuation at all.
Up until recently this is what I’ve been in favor of, and I think it’s a good default position. (In particular for the online community, with whatever linking people are motivated to do on their own). But I did just list several advantages of having more people in meetspace, and the NYC group at least has hit the upper limit on how many people it is practically to get together regularly.
There is still more advantage to be had by getting a wider variety of members, but we can’t do that unless we make a double-pronged effort: finding larger meeting spaces (which cost money) and ensuring enough people that the larger meeting spaces are justified. Either one by itself doesn’t really work.
“we should behave in ways that cause people we want to be associated with to want to associate with us” to turn into “we should behave in ways that cause people to want to associate with us”
The additional issue is that there are people that we wouldn’t necessarily explicitly want to come join us, but whom would be totally willing to come to our blog/club if we weren’t doing [X random easily changeable thing that we didn’t mean to do or don’t care that much about], and who would turn out to be valuable if we weren’t doing X thing. And I think that’s what a lot of the discussion has been about.
The “We Look Like a Cult” issue is contentious because people disagree on how many people are actually turned off by it, and how easily changed or valuable the characteristics that look cult-like are.
I agree with most of what you say here.
One exception: I disagree that identifying individuals whose association with LW would be mutually beneficial and encouraging that association is particularly hard to do in a targeted fashion online… I can find particular people and invite them to an online community, just as I can to a “meetspace” community. You seem to have jumped from “online” to “advertisements on websites” and I don’t really understand why.
Another exception: you say “we need to be hovering near the razor-edge that separates hollow-self-perpetuating organizations and actual good quality organizations, and actively remaining on that edge requires a lot of diligence and effort” I’m not sure we actually do need to be hovering near that edge. It might be OK for us to simply seek to be an actual good quality organization, and not devote much time or attention to self-perpetuation at all.
Regardless… in particular, I agree that it’s very easy for “we should behave in ways that cause people we want to be associated with to want to associate with us” to turn into “we should behave in ways that cause people to want to associate with us”—for nuance to get lost, as you say. Indeed, I think it’s happening: a non-negligible amount of recent discussion on related topics seems to me to fall in the latter category.
I was sort of rushing my conclusion and yeah, I agree with your assessment of my assessment. I think.
For the online thing, my brain leapt immediately to “most cost effective ways to recruit large numbers of people,” which wasn’t necessary. However, I didn’t just mean advertisements. I found Less Wrong though HP:MoR, but I was originally linked to THAT by a public discussion on a community forum. And I would have taken longer to make the transition if there hadn’t been additional discussion of Less Wrong itself on that forum.
This is more targeted than advertisements but less targeted than an individual recommendation. I also post particularly good articles on social media, which are in some ways even closer to advertisements. I don’t think a dedicated effort is required here, I think this kind of word-of-mouth is what would happen naturally.
Up until recently this is what I’ve been in favor of, and I think it’s a good default position. (In particular for the online community, with whatever linking people are motivated to do on their own). But I did just list several advantages of having more people in meetspace, and the NYC group at least has hit the upper limit on how many people it is practically to get together regularly.
There is still more advantage to be had by getting a wider variety of members, but we can’t do that unless we make a double-pronged effort: finding larger meeting spaces (which cost money) and ensuring enough people that the larger meeting spaces are justified. Either one by itself doesn’t really work.
The additional issue is that there are people that we wouldn’t necessarily explicitly want to come join us, but whom would be totally willing to come to our blog/club if we weren’t doing [X random easily changeable thing that we didn’t mean to do or don’t care that much about], and who would turn out to be valuable if we weren’t doing X thing. And I think that’s what a lot of the discussion has been about.
The “We Look Like a Cult” issue is contentious because people disagree on how many people are actually turned off by it, and how easily changed or valuable the characteristics that look cult-like are.