I’m Screwtape, also known as Skyler. I’m an aspiring rationalist originally introduced to the community through HPMoR, and I stayed around because the writers here kept improving how I thought. I’m fond of the Rationality As A Martial Art metaphor, new mental tools to make my life better, and meeting people who are strange in ways I find familiar and comfortable. If you’re ever in the Boston area, feel free to say hi.
Starting early in 2023, I’m the ACX Meetups Czar. You might also know me from the New York City Rationalist Megameetup, editing the Animorphs: The Reckoning podfic, or being that guy at meetups with a bright bandanna who gets really excited when people bring up indie tabletop roleplaying games.
I recognize that last description might fit more than one person.
Thank you! You’re right, “nobody goes there, it’s too crowded” is an effect that keeps the ladder unfurled, as is a kind of cohort dynamic I don’t have as good a conceptual handle for[1]. This post is mostly talking about meetups because they’re on my mind a lot and I had the examples handy. Ideally, the big and the small and the old and the new can reinforce and help each other, and sometimes that works. Other times, we get the pulled up ladder.
at a first pass description, sometimes there’s no public meetup so someone starts one, meets a bunch of new people who don’t have connections, makes friends, start having their friends over for dinner or going to museums and they’re too busy to run the public meetups and don’t need to because they have their social needs met. Then after a year or two of no public meetups, someone new starts one, and the cycle repeats, so you have multiple groups that don’t intermix as much as one might hope.