Needing Better PR

The Less Wrong Q&A is the most horribly designed... thing I've ever seen.

• I don't understand why these are videos. They don't offer diagrams or anything useful to see. As a visual it's just an utterly boring face speaking to us. Eliezer's voice isn't particularly charismatic. So why can't he just type his responses, which would be both easier for him to edit, and for us to browse though?

• Even if the video format served some purpose, the fact it's broken up in multiple videos, means that I can't even have the voice sound in the background while I'm eating or browsing articles or doing something else -- since it stops every couple minutes, and I then have to go back to click the next one (actually process is "go back to the page of the videos, click the link indicating the question, read the question, go back to the page of videos, click next video to start") Repeat the above 30 times. It's broken up in 30 videos. Thirty! What the hell.

• Worse yet, the questions aren't even above the videos. They are just linked to. And the links don't even go to a page where all the questions are grouped together, they go to different pages for each question. Which means that if you're looking to find the video that answers a particular question, you need click 30 links, then check the video that interests you, then go through all links again to find the next interesting video.

In short: screw that. I got bored after the third video or so, and quit the whole deal. What process of rationality determined all the above design choices? I'm asking that seriously. Whoever designed the thing, please justify these damned choices to us.

I'm going to go ahead and generalize from one example. While technically a 'success' since I am aware of Less Wrong, I would say I'm right on the border between the group of people who read LW and those who wouldn't. I share an interest in rationality (and somewhat less so with AI) but rest of the LW 'community knowledge' is very foreign to me. I never really read or watched science fiction (beyond maybe Sliders and the X-Files) and am only barely aware that fan-fiction exists . I've never had trouble socially and rarely feel awkward. The jargon is, at times, distancing but I think ultimately worth it. (The inherent trade-off between efficiency/precision and accessibility.) I imagine (with some prejudice) that LW is populated with people who refer to themselves as 'gamers' or who go LARPing or play Dungeon and Dragons (<- I think this is the first time I've ever typed the word 'Dungeon') or enjoy Monty Python. Things which, in my mind, are classified as 'nerd/geek/dork' things. (I've never quite understood the differences between these appellations.)

This, for me, is a very strange and alien world. Most (all?) groups have a cannon of knowledge/shared culture that you pretty much need to know to fit in. W.r.t. the mathematics and statistics, I'm right on board. Even a lot of the science I am up to speed on (or can become so). But I don't know all the other stuff, and my only incentive to learn it is to navigate LW world. I don't mean for any of this to be insulting, but I think if LW is to move forward, we are probably going to need to attract people like me, who also might have these stereotypes and prejudices. I don't know what the solution might be, but that's my perspective.

Interesting. As an interested person for whom Less Wrong is a highly interesting, challenging and entertaining site but isn't exactly an 'insider', the following points:

First: 'Let's hope it's the money woes, then. Or...hmm...maybe a vacuum to be met by someone who believes in the cause and also possesses mild wordcraft? What fancy!'

This is probably just lighthearted but it's worth noting because Less Wrong clearly does have that. Several people here write well, and Eliezer writes very engagingly indeed, if in a slightly unpolished way. So if there's a PR problem it's not lack of talent with words.

Second: there is a bit of a (conscious? proud?) nerd bias. However, I think this is probably for a complicated set of reasons and can't be switched off. 1) group identity. Most sites like this identify by idolising people they like or (more often) constantly mocking those they don't. This one does through a bit of self-reference, which is probably better 2) condition of order: the fact that this blog exists and doesn't get political (or topical at all in a controversial way) is incredible: the entropic tendency of the net is towards flame wars, and the active intellectualised culture here may be needed to present that 3) 'feeling like home': this is a bit like (1) but is particularly interesting on this site. I've seen informal polls/anecdote suggesting a lot of aspergers on here, and a lot of generalised lack of social confdence. As such, this site might be one of the best 'these people get me!' social places for some members, which mean they're likely to emphasise their (percieved) common attributes.

As a 'being honest even though it makes me sound like a dick' aside which may be relevant to the PR of this group: I've seen various discussions on here of how to think/learn your way past social anxiety or lack of social skills in a systematic deliberate way. My intellectual mind thinks 'what a great idea, good for them'. But I am INTENSELY aware of my instinctive reaction of 'weirdos! you can't treat your social life like that! I wouldn't want to be trapped in a lift with one of these people! AWKWARD!' This despite the fact that I've been to a couple of meetups and found people very interesting and engaging.

Finally, there's an issue around whether the different parts of LW and SIAI can be peeled apart. As this interesting recent discussion thread notes, there are a lot of claims that newbies are presented with

http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/73g/take_heed_for_it_is_a_trap/

critically, these are not only weird, but some of them have very obvious explanations from the external view. In particular, the core issues of AI and cryogenics immediately suggest a God-replacement/millenarian attitude and a rationalisation to escape fear of death respectively.

Even before "we need more/better PR" comes the questions "what kind of PR do we need?" That's essentially what you are struggling with, and it's a question that I don't think LW or SIAI has answered yet.

Anissimov is the current PR "minister".

Forgive me if this is a stupid question (I am new here), but is there a community-endorsed primer on the Singularity that I can read somewhere ? The reason I ask is that, currently, I am not convinced that the Singularity is likely to happen, and I'm not even convinced that it could happen at all. Thus, even if the leadership of SIAI were silver-tongued marketing geniuses on par with Steve Jobs, I would still be unlikely to join them.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of the Singularity. I would love to live in a post-Singularity, friendly-AI world. Therefore, I am compelled to examine the idea as critically as I can, to compensate for my cognitive bias.