Article about LW: Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York’s Futurist Set

Malo

Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York’s Futurist Set

To my knowledge LessWrong hasn't received a great deal of media coverage. So, I was surprised when I came across an article via a Facebook friend which also appeared on the cover of the New York Observer today. However, I was disappointed upon reading it, as I don't think it is an accurate reflection of the community. It certainly doesn't reflect my experience with the LW communities in Toronto and Waterloo.

I thought it would be interesting to see what the broader LessWrong community thought about this article. I think it would make for a good discussion.

Possible conversation topics:

This article will likely reach many people that have never heard of LessWrong before. Is this a good introduction to LessWrong for those people?
Does this article give an accurate characterization of the LessWrong community?

Edit 1: Added some clarification about my view on the article.

Edit 2: Re-added link using “nofollow” attribute.

Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York’s Futurist Set

I thought it would be interesting to see what the broader LessWrong community thought about this article. I think it would make for a good discussion.

Possible conversation topics:

This article will likely reach many people that have never heard of LessWrong before. Is this a good introduction to LessWrong for those people?
Does this article give an accurate characterization of the LessWrong community?

Edit 1: Added some clarification about my view on the article.

Edit 2: Re-added link using “nofollow” attribute.

Eliezer's OkCupid profile (as included in the titular link) provides some really good dating advice!

I've noticed that a lot of aspiring-rationalist females seem very shy and underconfident for one reason or another; so let me state here you shouldn't worry about disqualifying yourself or thinking that I'm not accessible to you. Don't decide on other people's behalf that they'll say no to you. Just decide whether you'd say yes yourself. Test experimentally what happens when you try asking directly for what you want - that's Empiricism. This advice applies any time you prefer the state of affairs where you sleep with a guy to not sleeping with him, and also to life in general.

According to OkC, EYudkowsky would be an 86% match with me. Wow. (But we're both straight guys and we're 10,035 km apart.)

13scientism14y

Here's some dating advice: Don't use the sentence "you shouldn't worry about disqualifying yourself or thinking that I'm not accessible to you" anytime anywhere, let alone on your dating profile. Some career advice: If your day job supposedly involves ethics, you should probably tone down the publicly-available dating profile where you advertise yourself as a polyamorous sadist who welcomes the casual advances of women who "want to sleep with me once so you can tell your grandchildren" (provided they don't "disqualify" themselves by thinking you're not "accessible", I suppose). I'm hoping the whole thing is tongue-in-cheek...? (If so, it's merely the product of poor judgment, rather than terrifying.)

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Article about LW: Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York’s Futurist Set

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Article about LW: Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York’s Futurist Set

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