Optimizing Rationality T-shirts

If you want to spread rationality to non rationalists, you don't sell them on messages that only rationalists understand.

Instead, just encourage rationalists to bait non rationalists with content pertaining to other subcultures like the Serentity Prayer (used in self help groups) or Start With The End in Mind (personal development circles). When likeminded people talk to rationalists with that chat bait we can lure them in to a better life.

Or you know, you can not spread rationality to people who actually express an interest in it than commercialising it?

The content of the shirts was terribly distracting from the style, especially 1-3.

8 and 14 seem strong, clean, legible, and a good length for a quip.

You don't have much room for visual distraction if you're trying to say something at all complicated.

As for what to put on it...

ooh, I just thought of a bumper sticker, in the style of 'I brake for X': 'I Update on Evidence'

I guess the first step is to decide what exactly do we want with each product (because going for mixed solutions will likely be suboptimal):

• signalling to other rationalists (including oneself)
• a short interesting message that can serve as a discussion opener
• a standalone explanation of some rationalist technique

The lower on this list you get, the more words you need, and probably the more elegance you have to sacrifice. Because generally, in design, less is better, but in explaining rationality, the inferential distances are huge. For example, for signalling to yourself and fellow rationalists, writing "LessWrong" or just "LW" would be enough.

You might also want to hire (or otherwise team up with) people who publish designs on sites like RedBubble or Threadless.

Form and content are not that easily separated. For instance, I like #15 (a bit), because the typography fits the message.

Instead, I'd suggest you focus on design that reinforces, ideally in a humorous way, the message of the slogan.

I feel strongly that "Please Provide an Example" ought to have the word "example" consist of hairy green ball things, in homage to Fenyman's famous explanation of how he would debug math or physics claim by turning abstract concepts into imagined examples.

"I notice I am confused" could play on a classic "magnifier" icon in the word "notice", and jumble up the letters of "cnfosued", or mess up their typography.

Yeah, I don't like any of these. But I don't really wear tshirts that are about text anymore. I care a lot about my clothing being aesthetically attractive. Meaningful is also great, but the only things I wear that have text on them are ones with logos I'm very aligned with... which is basically just CFAR. And even that shirt is elegant (nice cut, nice fabric, and the logo is pretty).

I have this cool old SingInst shirt that has a gorgeous work of art (see the art) on the front and says Towards The Singularity in small letters below. That's the kind of thing I'd like to see, both on myself and on other LWers. Although more up to date, obviously :P

Why would anyone wear that? I never really got this special print T-shirts or whatever. Can anyone explain this phenomenon?