I will post some thoughts about the document in the second link:
I believe that speaking about a decline is an exaggeration. We have MIRI and CFAR, which seem to have enough money to survive and do some activities. We have meetups around the world. We have discussion on LW; sometimes more articles, sometimes less, but usually it’s a few articles a day. I don’t think we had more than this in the past. Sometimes it feels like we are losing momentum (which is not the same thing as decline), and I am not sure whether data support it. I admit that a few years ago I expected “something huge”, and these days it’s like “I don’t even know what exactly is happening”, but this may be a fact about my knowledge.
Maybe a good start would be to make a page on LW wiki describing the timeline of the rationalist movement. What happened when. Looking at this calendar would give us better idea about our progress. (Also it would provide some material to media.)
I agree with the idea of smaller task groups. I mean, we have MIRI, we have CFAR, but most of us at this website are members of neither. Yet some of us would like to do something. We could start informal groups cooperating on internet (or in person in those lucky places with enough rationalists), pick some smaller task and do it. There is a website for volunteers, but we don’t have to limit ourselves to the tasks given by other people; we could also try our own ideas.
The details of motivation and organization of these groups seem to me overly complicated. If the group has half dozen members, I guess we can just use the common sense. The difficult part would be finding those half dozen people willing to spend their time towards a common goal. And I think that for the beginning, a sufficient motivation could be: just do your task, and then publish a bragging article on LW.
Educating those people in rationality seems like a task for one of such groups.
I will post some thoughts about the document in the second link:
I believe that speaking about a decline is an exaggeration. We have MIRI and CFAR, which seem to have enough money to survive and do some activities. We have meetups around the world. We have discussion on LW; sometimes more articles, sometimes less, but usually it’s a few articles a day. I don’t think we had more than this in the past. Sometimes it feels like we are losing momentum (which is not the same thing as decline), and I am not sure whether data support it. I admit that a few years ago I expected “something huge”, and these days it’s like “I don’t even know what exactly is happening”, but this may be a fact about my knowledge.
Maybe a good start would be to make a page on LW wiki describing the timeline of the rationalist movement. What happened when. Looking at this calendar would give us better idea about our progress. (Also it would provide some material to media.)
I agree with the idea of smaller task groups. I mean, we have MIRI, we have CFAR, but most of us at this website are members of neither. Yet some of us would like to do something. We could start informal groups cooperating on internet (or in person in those lucky places with enough rationalists), pick some smaller task and do it. There is a website for volunteers, but we don’t have to limit ourselves to the tasks given by other people; we could also try our own ideas.
The details of motivation and organization of these groups seem to me overly complicated. If the group has half dozen members, I guess we can just use the common sense. The difficult part would be finding those half dozen people willing to spend their time towards a common goal. And I think that for the beginning, a sufficient motivation could be: just do your task, and then publish a bragging article on LW.
Educating those people in rationality seems like a task for one of such groups.