Raise the Age Demographic

Thanks, some great links.

I'm thinking we should gather this stuff together somewhere... maybe start a wiki page on resources for teaching kids as it relate to rationality. We can cross-link the books with LessWrong articles, like you've done above.

I'd enjoy it if, in a similar movie, the protagonist figured out that everything his society believes is wrong--but then almost all of the errors turned out to be unexploitable, because they were adaptive in some way. You know, like in real life. If media like that became popular, it might avert some cynical teenage angst.

Yeah, I like that story. Didn't realise he'd pitched it at older kids. Of course older kids can read adult stuff just fine anyways :)

I'm more interested in what we can pitch at younger kids.

I was thinking aesops-fable-wise, to at least provide a kind of environment of thinking/rationality/curiosity and all that good stuff...

I'll keep thinking about it myself, but I'd love to hear from anybody else that actually has skill/experience.

EG I'm sure we have teachers and/or psychologists in the audience somewhere who can weigh in on this ?

Or even just people that have got through all the sequences (or wrote them... :) ) who can point out some the most fundamental points in a list... ?

Yes. And this is one of my (and I think others') big problems with calcsam's series here: the whole thing seems to presuppose that the goal is to attract as many people and keep them as long as possible and as committed as possible, regardless of whether we're actually providing them with value, informing or misinforming them, messing with their heads in good or bad ways, etc. Which may well be a "good" way for a religious group to think about outreach, though I feel pretty cynical saying that too, but really seems More Wrong for this particular context.

Now, doubtless there's an opposite error -- of expecting millions of people to take one look, be overwhelmed by the extraordinary levels of rationality and insight displayed here, and leap into our arms -- and that would be a good thing to avoid too. (Religious groups have their own version of that error too, of course.) But there is such a thing as overreaction.

the latter requires a lot more effort from the inductee

I object here. I can't comment on all religions, but here are the things we would ask people to do, mandatory if they wanted to join the LDS church:

• No premarital/extramarital sex (one woman we helped work through a really messy divorce to a man she was separated from and marry her boyfriend who she was living with.)
• No porn
• No tea/coffee (and everyone in India is addicted to this)
• No alcohol
• No smoking
• Give tithing, ie, 10% of your income
• Resolve any job time conflicts so you can come to church on Sundays

...and more, but the other ones weren't mandatory, and some like treating wives as equals, were more difficult to enforce.

Probably many of those things, especially the not having enough in common, but I'm guessing we're primarily looking at garden-variety conformity here... when I find myself in a group of people who are strikingly different from myself, even if I'm made welcome, I feel silly. When I realized there aren't many other married women on LessWrong, my immediate reaction was literally, "Why aren't there others? Am I doing something stupid? Am I a bad wife? Should I be doing housework right now?" This all happened within seconds. I was able to recognize these thoughts as maybe not totally rational only because the housework thing sounded silly, and I still did some vacuuming.

As a thirty-something who has sometimes avoided twenty-something groups, I can add a couple of mostly hard-to-admit ones. For instance, it's hard to keep up with the energy of the youngsters, you feel old in comparison, but also you feel like you're going to be expected to, and you know you'll fail... and possibly then be branded a flake-out. So it's easier to avoid going in the first place.

It's kinda silly in some ways. You see, twenty-somethings have not only more energy (and resilience and ability to stay up and not need to sleep as much), but more time (due to, on average, fewer Hard commitments)... so there's no way we should feel bad about not being able to keep up... but we do.

I see the NY group is really gung-ho - making motivation-pacts and working towards goals and moving in together and everything... and while I sort of look at that in an envious way.. I also much prefer the more relaxed, less-commitment-essential approach of the London group.

I am certain that if I was part of the NY group, nobody would actually think less of me for not participating as much as the more committed members... but I would still feel bad by comparison.

What counts as "making the others present feel uncomfortable"? Do you mean actively saying anti-sex things, or just being too old?

I match the general LW meetup demographic in age, race, and religious beliefs, but not in gender, occupation, or hobbies. I recently started attending the Cambridge MA meetup, and I'll be interested to see how it goes. I'm a married woman with zero experience in math or hard science, who works with people rather than data, who plans to have kids, and who attends church for the community and comfort of it. No one at the meetup has yet indicated they can't accept these things (except the word "church", which elicited actual cries of dismay.)

I think it would be a loss to this community if we preemptively discourage people because they don't resemble the rest of the group in outward ways. A lot of people from other walks of life have never been exposed to the idea of polyamory, or transhumanism, or what have you. That doesn't mean they have no capacity to think about them.

Hey! I resemble that remark. Or at least, I hope I do.

I'm an outlier here on both gender and age scales. And spending time within this community is on the short list of best things I've ever done.

Though clearly such people exist in the New York area. Jeff Mach could likely name a large number of them.

Note: I think all his events have been at least 16+, so he may not know how to attract new parents. (I'm guessing they want articles on How to Make Your Child Go To Sleep Already, and later on Non-Religious Places to Stick Your Child For a Few Hours.)

It's more likely that some of the younger participants would be weirded out by someone their parents' age discussing anything related to sex, something they are probably still compartmentalizing into the "they did it once for me, once for my brother" box.

The church that I grew up in had multiple (2? 3?) services every Sunday. One of the services was scheduled at the same time as the Sunday school classes; another frequently (but not very reliably, to my memory - I always considered it a pleasant surprise, though I suspect it was announced ahead of time somewhere) had the children sit through the first half of the regular service, then go to the front for a short 'children's sermon' followed by an activity elsewhere in the building that was supposedly a kids' version of the regular service after that point. (This was an optional thing: Kids were invited to go up for the children's sermon, but could opt to stay with their parents and sit through the rest of the service.) There was also a nursery/babysitting service for the little kids during all except maybe the earliest service; this was staffed by volunteers, but teens in the year leading up to full membership in the congregation were expected to volunteer a certain number of times for that or handful of other roles in order to be accepted. It didn't seem to be especially unusual for parents to bring their toddlers to regular services, but if a toddler became disruptive the norm was for the parent to drop em off in the nursery. It definitely wasn't normal for kids to be running around loose on the church grounds during any service, though. After, during the social period, yeah, but during the services we were expected to be at the service or in an activity of some sort.

The Unitarian church that my parents took me too (both of them, actually, the one in Washington State and the one in Ottawa, Canada) had a Sunday school, with classes divided by age. I remember reading a storybook about Buddhism, coloring, acting out stories from the Old Testament, etc. There was a class for slightly older children (I was maybe 11) and that was where I got my first book about puberty, and the grownup talk that came with it. I don't remember finding Sunday school incredibly fascinating, but I don't remember not wanting to go, either. (My brother hated it and his resistance was the main reason why we eventually stopped going, but he also hated skiing lessons, cottage trips, and pretty much all the activities we did as a family.)

One synagogue works like this: Children can either sit next to their mother or father and pray, or stare off into space, or amuse themselves quietly with books or toys; or they can wander around the hallways and dining rooms and lounges and playrooms and play with each other. By the time they are teenagers, they are expected to participate in the ritual as adults. If a family has a baby, one parent (usually the mother) will arrive an hour before the ritual ends with the baby, and periodically carry the baby outside to keep it happy. They can also keep an eye on the older children when they do this.

Another synagogue has all that, plus a structured activity for schoolchildren and teenagers, led by a lay clergy.

The above two paragraphs are also accurate descriptions of family dinners in my family. Instead of praying there is eating.

In all the Christian churches I have been to, the children are expected to sit in the pews the whole time. I suppose this is practical if the ritual isn't too long, and desirable if they can get some value out of the ritual.

At the Catholic churches in my area (the ones I am most familiar with since I have to 'volunteer' for said activities), kids are only expected to sit through the boring parts of Mass once they hit middle school.

Before that, they're taken out or downstairs for the 'Children's Mass' (don't know the real name), which is more arts & crafts combined with colorful pamphlets and story telling. In summers, a lot of them attend 'Vacation Bible School' which is the Children's Mass writ large and with outdoors activities. Teenagers get to go to 'Youth Ministry' events, which are heavy on hanging out, music, and that sort of thing (the most loyal getting to go to a big festival thing in Massachusetts or somewhere) - the events are a lot more popular than one might expect.

Judging from the videos produced by the diocese, they seem very pleased with the programs' success with young people and retention.

OP is suggesting we need to diversify LW group, particularly by recruiting older people.

In that sense I completely agree with the OP. My concern is that religion and rationality are not interchangeable--rationality is not a religion substitute in the sense that the act of rational thought itself doesn't give too many fuzzies. (At least, that's how it looks to people on the outside.) To clarify further: my argument is that rationality itself, not rationalist communities, is lacking in emotional appeal. Because of this, you can't always expect people looking for a belief system that will give their children comforting thoughts to pick rationality over religion.

I disagree--as I've mentioned here, I've encountered many people who consider a godless universe to be extremely scary, to the point where they refuse to give up theism despite their doubts. However, I do agree that rationality's difficulty is the largest deterring factor.