Introducing others to LessWrong-ism... through comics!

The real enemies of rationality are not evil, or selfish, but merely confused people, doing what they think is right in spite of the fact that it isn't.

I notice that I am confused.

I have a reasonably firm belief that there are at least some people who /are/ evil and selfish, acting to benefit themselves in ways that cause harm to large numbers of other people; people who act as if the universe were either a zero-sum or negative-sum game rather than a positive-sum game; and that such people tend to seek power over others, including political and economic power. But I can't think of any evidence that would be reasonably persuasive to someone who believed such people don't exist. And I'm not sure what it would take to convince me that such people don't exist.

I sense that I'm failing at being a rationalist somehow, but I can't quite figure out the nature of that failure or how to fix it.

I assumed this was a necessary ill, applause lights to keep the demographic reading and not part of the actual content.

Re "Show people changing their mind", that's at the top of my list for ideas for a third comic. (In association with "Learn how to lose" as applied to ideas - that before you can have a meaningful victory, defeat has to be at least conceivable. Probably throwing in a Litany of Tarski while I'm at it.)

Content-wise: I have two justifications for what you disagree with, one involving taking broad principles and narrowing them down into "do it today" tactics, the other involving writing about a topic the intended audience wants to read about. The latter is more important - if I'm not going to talk to a target audience about that which makes them a target audience, that doesn't leave me much to hang a comic on that they'll want to read.

I don't think Rationality Matters could be generalized to be appealing to all audiences while still being appealing - to interest different groups, I'd have to comic up with comics that focus on their particular areas of interest... and I know more about the current targets than I do most other groups, so a re-aimed comic would likely do more poorly. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that I don't think I've got the chops to do it.

This was partly a deliberate choice, since the artist I selected has done a number of other "rant" comics in similar style, but you're quite right. Increasing the art-to-text ratio is one of my priorities for any future comics.

Ask yourself if libertarians are likely to learn anything new from it

I've paid reasonably close attention to libertarian discussions for a few years now; and it was only this year that I had certain insights into the nature of politics, ideas which I hadn't seen discussed amongst libertarians before. It was one of these insights that I used as the basis of the comic's discussion on oligarchs and democracy - as far as I can tell, it is a new idea for its target audience.

(Of course, I could be wrong.)

We generally avoid calling things "irrational".

I'll try to remember that in the future.

The first comic is distinctly better - though the ending is very disorienting, but that's because I usually budget my furry-cheesecake time and my rationality-cheerleading time very separately, and you caused a memory protection fault in my brain.

I'll take that as a compliment, I think.

The second comic... no, just no. The bottom line it writes is visible from space. I know you want to get already-libertarians to read it, but the only way you could get this aligned with rationality is to start from the beginning, chronicle your entire process of deciding what political position to take, and be genuinely unsure of which side you would end up taking.

This is what I'm thinking of trying to cover in the potential third instalment - that, in order to truly know/believe/understand that (political position X) is a useful social tool, you have to consider that it might not be, and do so seriously. At the moment, I'm trying to figure out which of LessWrong's most quotable thoughts could be applied therein, with the top of the list being the Litany of Tarski and an adapted version of learning how to lose (eg, that "losing must be thinkable").

Seconded. The art style is not helping.

Actually, I like the art in itself. It's giving me nostalgia goosebumps for early 90s fanzines I was too young to read. But in combination with the walls of text it's rubbing me the wrong way. Even if you were just explaining Bayes' Theorem, it would look like a rant.

Fair enough. I can't expect to create Eisner-winning material on my first try, after all. :)

Assuming I do continue with any further instalments, do you have any suggestions for what I can do to fix the problems you've identified?

I appreciate your well-considered criticism - and agree with a good deal of it.

However, this one line...

I didn't enjoy reading it, and don't imagine I would even if I was in the target audience.

... has run counter to the feedback I've been getting from individuals in my target audience; while they've commented on the various points raised, those who have gotten in touch with me so far have seemed to enjoy the comic. Thus, I'm having to keep in mind the difference between your statement here and what I've experienced so far as I consider the rest of your points.

The character, who doesn't seem to have a name, seems neither sympathetic nor believable as a person

I've noticed that I have a strange habit, when I write fiction of any sort, of occasionally completely ignoring the whole idea of names. (I even tried writing a story specifically about that, in the Orion's Arm setting.)

As for sympathy and believability - she's a "fursona", a furry-subculture cross between a personal avatar and a fictional/roleplaying character, so I'm curious which parts of her you find least sympathetic or believable (so I can determine whether those are the parts based directly on myself).

the same character is responsible for both the narration and most of the illustrating random antics accompanying it. If you want to keep a similar format you absolutely need a second character.

Hm... Would it really make much of a difference if the second character is also responsible for both narration and random antics?

I ask because I have an example of a previous comic done by the artist, "Karno's Heresies", the non-adult pages of which can currently be found here, which was done in a similar format and aimed at a similar audience.

I'm not sure what the reader is supposed to think about being bribed with imaginary erotic favors (even assuming they find the offer in principle alluring), particularly when they are supposed to be persuaded of the virtues of changing their mind based on evidence.

It's partly a joke, and partly an as-obvious-as-possible invocation of the Dark Arts.

I've gotten a bit of positive feedback from both non-furry libertarians and non-libertarian furries, so I think I'm doing reasonably well at targeting both audiences both together and separately.

(Of course, I could be wrong.)

Put on the 'to-do' list - after all, no reason I can't have both presentations on different pages.

The first comic is nsfw

Really? Hunh. I'd tried very hard to avoid crossing that line. What in particular do you feel makes it so?

and assumes its audience is attracted to women.

I have survey data backing up my anecdotal experience suggesting that the audience generally is attracted to women. :)

The message is mostly ok though, I think.

Good to hear.

The second comic makes a lot of assumptions that I'm not sure are necessarily true, while the final compact is not terribly original, and, as with all brief compacts, is needlessly ambigous (how much freedom of property do I have. What does ownership mean precisely (can I inherit it? Is the only way to obtain it via the exchange of goods? How far does self defence stretch?)

I could argue about various aspects of this, but that's not what I'm here to do. (At least, it's not what I'm trying to be here to do.) I will say that a lot of the ambiguity you refer to can be cleared up by assuming that the terms in question are subculture-specific jargon, with relatively well-defined meanings understood within the target audience, and that once those jargon terms are considered defined, at least some of the areas of ambiguity are deliberate in order to allow different subgroups of the audience to agree with the non-ambiguous parts, to allow 'fellow travellers' to cooperate towards their shared goals.

I'm not really sure how I could improve this aspect. Taking the time to define terms the target audience already knows would give me fewer panels in which to describe the new ideas I want to introduce to them. Any advice on broadening the appeal without losing core target interest would be cheerfully accepted.

A few thoughts ...

Which I am very happy to read.

Rationality (both epistemic and instrumental) is about applying methods, not having beliefs about those methods. Illustrating the methods, rather than just talking about them and saying that they are good, would probably be more effective. Show characters engaging in rationality, not just praising it.

I agree - and this is what I'm currently trying to figure out how to script out. (I'd tried to do something like this in the second part, describing how to try 'getting the job done' of increasing liberty even when stuck in a political system full of 'top of the dung heap oligarchs', but it ended up being more about the specific tactics than the thinking processes used to figure those tactics out.)

At this point, any suggestions on how to do that would be cheerfully welcomed.

I really do not like the panel where the ostensibly rationalist rat character is beating the religious dog character over the head with a stick. In my experience, hitting people is not a useful way to get them to think.

Maybe I should start a discussion thread here on the 'Stick Test' I came up with some time ago, a rather more direct method to refute certain forms of philosophical navel-gazing such as solipsism, adapted from Dr. Johnson's famous "I refute it thus!".

Moreover, giving "rationalist" people arguments for hating "non-rationalist" people is probably a really, really bad idea.

... hate? Hrm. Do you really see that panel as involving hatred? I was hoping it would be closer to 'frustration with people who disparage not just the truth, but the methods of determining it' (and a bit of harmless cartoon-humorous release of said frustration).

I wanted to start out by ruling out as many of the unverified/unverifiable 'escape hatch' versions of physics of possible, such as being able to open a door to alternate timelines. Since, as far as I understand it, Many Worlds 'adds up to normality', that is the single apparent universe we see around us, and I don't understand Many Worlds well enough to argue about it, I felt safe enough in sweeping it under the rug for this presentation.

Putting
s in between would fix that.

Fixed! Thank you kindly.

I agree.

Particularly with respect to the "Citizens should keep themselves well armed" part, I have serious doubts that this is useful advice in practice or principle; it makes it more difficult for me not to view the rest of the comic negatively, and if you want to cultivate good epistemological and instrumental rationalists, this is probably some of the lowest priority advice you could be giving.

Politics is high priority stuff, and it's important that it be approached rationally, but if you want to instruct rationalists, it's one of the worst possible teaching tools.

To be clear, the reason I retracted my post was because jimrandomh had already made the same point. Next time I will check the comments before posting. Also, I would not have retracted it if I had known someone had already replied to it.