I was talking to my brother the other day about the blinders that come from hanging out only with math/physics/compsci nerds. And he suggested that yes, it is valuable to expose oneself to many types of people, but looking for “normal people” or “non-nerds” is the wrong way to do it; normal people are boring. The thing to do is to find people who share some other kind of passionate interest—people’s whose enthusiasm for public speaking, or windsurfing, or whatever it is has driven the creation of their own interesting, idiosyncratic culture.
As a student, I participated in a (fairly small) number of programs for women in math. The programs were all lousy. I love it when I find other women I can really talk to—it makes me feel more at home with myself, my gender, and my ability to learn to think. But these programs weren’t like that. These programs were blah. “Adding more women” is a boring aim, like “meeting normal people” or “meeting non-nerds”. Usually it’s achieved by taking whatever it is that might make the program distinctive (e.g., math talent, or an analytical/argumentative spirit) and watering down that distinctiveness until more women are involved.
I don’t know if there’s a viable alternative here, but it’s worth asking if we can find something distinctive and interesting that:
Usefully adds to, compliments, or extends the existing OB/LW content base, and
Automatically includes more women in its set of skilled/passionate practitioners, without need to water down its distinctiveness or its virtues.
Pjeby, elsewhere in this thread, suggested that instrumental rationality (using rationality to achieve visible, concrete aims) might be a useful, distinctive skill-set that naturally includes more women among its passionate practitioners. Another candidate might be rationality components that emphasize inter- and intra-personal skills, such as emotional self-awareness. (I’m fairly lousy at that one myself, but understanding one’s own motives is clearly part of making good decisions in the face of human biases. And stereotypes suggest we might get better gender-balance here.) Anyone have any other suggestions?
I do want to emphasize—it was in a previous version of the post, in fact, but I took it out—that I am maintaining my phrasing of my goal as create rationalists not create female rationalists. But if half of the audience is being filtered for some silly avoidable reason, then I want to fix that.
I am maintaining my phrasing of my goal as create rationalists not create female rationalists
There is a strong selfish incentive for single male rationalists to pursue this goal, though. I know I would love to have my next girlfriend be a rationalist (if only to avoid my most recent failure mode), and given the numbers, that’s probably not something every male rationalist can hope for right now.
But if half of the audience is being filtered for some silly avoidable reason, then I want to fix that.
One point is that it’s rather silly of people to filter out for silly reasons. You don’t stop reading a good book because it uses a funny font. This may be made into a general warning, a failure mode to be avoided, and linked to from the introductory article. Although I understand that it’s not a mode of thinking that is likely to work where the mistake surfaces.
You don’t stop reading a good book because it uses a funny font.
You very well might, if you found the font so distracting that you couldn’t enjoy the book. I think that you can only assert that this is a failure mode by misunderstanding who is being “silly” and who has control of avoiding the “avoidable”.
You don’t stop reading a good book because it uses a funny font.
Of course not! You stop reading it because there are too many plot holes, the characters irritate you or the author is just too naive for you to stomache. Meanwhile the guy who bought the other printing of the book which has a more aesthetic font keeps reading to the end and then gives it to his friends.
I had similar experiences in my first year of university (though it was Women in Science instead of Math, a slightly larger population). It was boring.
Women in Rationality screams “pointless PC navel-gazing” because of association with these experiences.
Yup, me too, but it was “Women in IT”. I stopped going to that and started hanging out with the local linux group—far more interesting, despite the inevitable gender-imbalance.
This is what we’re doing at LW Netherlands. The “partner” community we’ve chosen is the spirituality community, which strikes me as remarkably complementary to LW in multiple ways. We’re going to weekly ecstatic dance parties, some of us are signing up for zen retreats (which is a bit more masculine), and there’s the potential that some of us will try tantra at some point.
And it’s really gold for learning rationality, because when it comes to lines of attack on becoming smarter, spirituality couldn’t be more different from, yet as potent as, our strategy.
Bonus is that their gender ratio is pretty much the inverse of ours.
I do want to emphasize—it was in a previous version of the post, in fact, but I took it out—that I am maintaining my phrasing of my goal as create rationalists not create female rationalists. But if half of my audience is being filtered for some silly avoidable reason, then I want to fix that.
I do want to emphasize—it was in a previous version of the post, in fact, but I took it out—that I am maintaining my phrasing of my goal as create rationalists not create female rationalists. But if half of my audience is being filtered for some silly avoidable reason, then I want to fix that.
I do want to emphasize—it was in a previous version of the post, in fact, but I took it out—that I am maintaining my phrasing of my goal as create rationalists not create female rationalists. But if half of my audience is being filtered for some silly avoidable reason, then I want to fix that.
I was talking to my brother the other day about the blinders that come from hanging out only with math/physics/compsci nerds. And he suggested that yes, it is valuable to expose oneself to many types of people, but looking for “normal people” or “non-nerds” is the wrong way to do it; normal people are boring. The thing to do is to find people who share some other kind of passionate interest—people’s whose enthusiasm for public speaking, or windsurfing, or whatever it is has driven the creation of their own interesting, idiosyncratic culture.
As a student, I participated in a (fairly small) number of programs for women in math. The programs were all lousy. I love it when I find other women I can really talk to—it makes me feel more at home with myself, my gender, and my ability to learn to think. But these programs weren’t like that. These programs were blah. “Adding more women” is a boring aim, like “meeting normal people” or “meeting non-nerds”. Usually it’s achieved by taking whatever it is that might make the program distinctive (e.g., math talent, or an analytical/argumentative spirit) and watering down that distinctiveness until more women are involved.
I don’t know if there’s a viable alternative here, but it’s worth asking if we can find something distinctive and interesting that:
Usefully adds to, compliments, or extends the existing OB/LW content base, and
Automatically includes more women in its set of skilled/passionate practitioners, without need to water down its distinctiveness or its virtues.
Pjeby, elsewhere in this thread, suggested that instrumental rationality (using rationality to achieve visible, concrete aims) might be a useful, distinctive skill-set that naturally includes more women among its passionate practitioners. Another candidate might be rationality components that emphasize inter- and intra-personal skills, such as emotional self-awareness. (I’m fairly lousy at that one myself, but understanding one’s own motives is clearly part of making good decisions in the face of human biases. And stereotypes suggest we might get better gender-balance here.) Anyone have any other suggestions?
I do want to emphasize—it was in a previous version of the post, in fact, but I took it out—that I am maintaining my phrasing of my goal as create rationalists not create female rationalists. But if half of the audience is being filtered for some silly avoidable reason, then I want to fix that.
There is a strong selfish incentive for single male rationalists to pursue this goal, though. I know I would love to have my next girlfriend be a rationalist (if only to avoid my most recent failure mode), and given the numbers, that’s probably not something every male rationalist can hope for right now.
One point is that it’s rather silly of people to filter out for silly reasons. You don’t stop reading a good book because it uses a funny font. This may be made into a general warning, a failure mode to be avoided, and linked to from the introductory article. Although I understand that it’s not a mode of thinking that is likely to work where the mistake surfaces.
You very well might, if you found the font so distracting that you couldn’t enjoy the book. I think that you can only assert that this is a failure mode by misunderstanding who is being “silly” and who has control of avoiding the “avoidable”.
Of course not! You stop reading it because there are too many plot holes, the characters irritate you or the author is just too naive for you to stomache. Meanwhile the guy who bought the other printing of the book which has a more aesthetic font keeps reading to the end and then gives it to his friends.
I had similar experiences in my first year of university (though it was Women in Science instead of Math, a slightly larger population). It was boring.
Women in Rationality screams “pointless PC navel-gazing” because of association with these experiences.
Yup, me too, but it was “Women in IT”. I stopped going to that and started hanging out with the local linux group—far more interesting, despite the inevitable gender-imbalance.
This is what we’re doing at LW Netherlands. The “partner” community we’ve chosen is the spirituality community, which strikes me as remarkably complementary to LW in multiple ways. We’re going to weekly ecstatic dance parties, some of us are signing up for zen retreats (which is a bit more masculine), and there’s the potential that some of us will try tantra at some point.
And it’s really gold for learning rationality, because when it comes to lines of attack on becoming smarter, spirituality couldn’t be more different from, yet as potent as, our strategy.
Bonus is that their gender ratio is pretty much the inverse of ours.
(To anyone else reading this nearly five years after it was posted: one year later, Alicorn did this.)
I do want to emphasize—it was in a previous version of the post, in fact, but I took it out—that I am maintaining my phrasing of my goal as create rationalists not create female rationalists. But if half of my audience is being filtered for some silly avoidable reason, then I want to fix that.
I do want to emphasize—it was in a previous version of the post, in fact, but I took it out—that I am maintaining my phrasing of my goal as create rationalists not create female rationalists. But if half of my audience is being filtered for some silly avoidable reason, then I want to fix that.
I do want to emphasize—it was in a previous version of the post, in fact, but I took it out—that I am maintaining my phrasing of my goal as create rationalists not create female rationalists. But if half of my audience is being filtered for some silly avoidable reason, then I want to fix that.
Triple post. Please fix.