I paged through all of it. It's a standard handbook for meetup planning and not especially spicy in its departures from sense, or even very culty. The reading list and quoted "luminaries" are what you'd expect from the rat crew. Maaaaybe don't choose Nick Bostrom as the pull-quote for the "devil's advocate" game, sheesh.
What stood out most was the myopic lack of caveats for argument- and belief-based games and activities that are practically guaranteed to result in othering, offense, harassment, etc. The section on male/female balance at meetups gives a brief, passing, supercilious nod to the idea that hey, the perception of sexism is important even if the offender didn't intend it -- and then blithely chucks that out the window thereafter. The "Rejection Game" could be an actually useful exercise but the obvious "DON'T FKING USE THIS TO HIT ON OTHER ATTENDEES" advice is absent (of course). There's almost no consideration of sensitivity toward group members' well-being in the execution of their club activities, as if they assume everyone else is a Rational Robot-Person Who Is Far Beyond Plebeian Concerns Like "Being Offended" Or "Considering Other People Might Lack The Privilege I Take For Granted". Shocking, I know.
also, a quote from Yud's "Epistle to the New York Less Wrongians" = oh man how pompous can you *get*, dude
“For the love of AI god please directly target women”
(paraphrased):
Let’s face it; most Less Wrongers are male… work hard to find
interested women
“But make sure they don’t know it’s because they’re women”:
treat everyone as people with their own personalities, not as
representatives of a homogenous group. Even well-meaning statements like
“it’s nice to see some women here” single out a person’s sex
Or my favorite bit here:
if you’re winning at life and having enough fun [then] women will
want to join you
Who wants to tell them that LW is not winning at life?
Yeah they just defeat the point by the other advice. The idea that 'winning at life' is how you get [group that is underrepresented in your members] to join you in particular is so starkly un-self-reflective it's insane.
Please don’t just give me a reading assignment like this; share some excepts that are sneer worthy. This thing is 37 pages
“For the love of AI god please directly target women” (paraphrased):
“But make sure they don’t know it’s because they’re women”:
Or my favorite bit here:
Who wants to tell them that LW is not winning at life?
Those women claiming sexual harassment had it wrong, they weren’t really being asked to join polycules it was Rejection Therapy!
I skimmed over that document, and it mentions that a group had the objective of increasing the truthfulness of their beliefs!? With that wording…
This looks like the worst of the worst of department “cookouts” from grad school. Holy fucking yikes
Apparently Prince Valiant is a member