LW's image problem: "Rationality" is suspicious

If you want to promote the republishing of LW articles, I think you'd be more inclined to drop the Singularity/Futurism bits from the tagline. They're alienating and off-message, I think.

Also, when I try to share an article on G+, G+ pulls the following text for summary: "Less Wrong Discussion Future of Humanity InstituteSingularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Main. Posts; Comments. Discussion. Posts; Comments. Less Wrong is a community blog devoted to refin...". No good.

So therefore I think LW's admins/web designers should seriously consider replacing the rationality tagline

As far as I'm concerned, rationality is what LessWrong is about, and the tagline says exactly that. I'm not interested in reading a Singularity/AI/transhumanism forum, and those exist elsewhere for those who are. I assume that the SIAI and FHI logos have to be there to acknowledge the funding, but if it wasn't for that, I'd rather see them removed.

OTOH, it does in fact have a singularitarian agenda: to create or attract people sufficiently rational to do real work on FAI.

If people are claiming the rationality tagline is code for transhumanism and technophilia, why wouldn't they also claim that for a more savory tagline?

I'm mainly concerned about the effect the tagline will have on people who are interested or potentially interested in refining human rationality. I'm not sure that there's a better way to attract people than advertizing that this is actually what we're about.

Any opinions about what proportion of people have an automatic "what's the agenda?" filter?

Cut the crap, nobody cares about rationality in the abstract.

But rationality in the abstract is so interesting! (To a certain subset of the population, and maybe the people who don't belong to that subset feel alienated by ideas that seem boring to them, but that doesn't mean it's wrong to be interested in rationality because it's cool to think about.)

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No. I read LW for several years exactly because I am interested in rationality in the abstract.

I find it hard to decipher what exactly do you propose and why. Do you agree whith the second quoted text (i.e. that rationality is a ruse to propagate transhumanism)? Do you suggest that LW should be "honest" and replace the current tagline with "transhumanist propaganda website"? Or, on the other hand, do you suggest that the ruse is imperfect and the true purpose should be better hidden?

Wouldn't dropping the rationality tagline instead convince people even more thoroughly that it's not actually about rationality, but rather something else?

That being said, I agree with those concerns. LW doesn't have an agenda per se (beyond being sponsored by the SIAI), but the LW majority clearly does. While harsh, "a bunch of fringe technophiles" accurately describes a significant, and vocal, fraction of people here.

So what would be more savory? Actually: what would be more savory and not misrepresent us at the same time? I mean, there is genuine interest in rationality around here. Sure, there's also above average representation of atheism and "fringe technophile ideas", and it's no accident that this is so, but that doesn't mean the interest in rationality is a thin veneer to mask a more political or ideological cause.

Yes, it's a plausible reaction. Someone potentially interested in rationality, but unwilling to suppose that a site claiming to be devoted to it is what it claims to be because he's used to everyone trying to "sell something", refuses to check the site out properly based on that.

But is that really the tagline's fault? Is it possible to do better with a different tagline? If we claim to be about something other than rationality, we just mislead potential readers and members who are interested in rationality rather than in that something else.

If I honestly want to talk about A, and you believe I'm trying to sell B, I don't think I can do any better than to keep trying to show that I'm genuinely interested in A. There's little to gain from my surrendering to your disbelief and agreeing that I'm trying to sell B, or inventing some (perhaps more plausible) C.

I actually disagree; the "Rationality" tagline is highly appropriate, especially as the singularitarians here are devoted to rational thought processes anyway in AI research.

I would, however, like to point out that the site seems to get mixed up with other groups as well:

"RationalWiki" - the highly politically partisan pro-science web page (kind of an opponent to LW, apparently.

Rationalism (philosophy) - Spinoza, Leibniz, Descartes (but they pretty much ignored empiricism so they have little to do with LW thinking)

Rationalism (Ayn Rand) - the worst kind. LW isn't a social-engineering organization, especially one committed to absolute "rational" selfishness.

So the tagline is good, but we should try not to get mixed up with those groups.

Indeed it is written

If you speak overmuch of the Way you will not attain it.

I strongly agree. Exceedingly so.