Sometimes I notice that people in communities formed around an attribute display a higher intensity of that attribute than one’d expect – here’s my hypothesis for why this might be.
Selection effects: if you pluck a random person from the gym, they will probably be more of a fitness enthusiast than the average person who regularly goes to the gym, because more enthusiastic exercisers work out more often, so you’re more likely to have picked them. So if you peer across the gym room, you’ll see a bunch of super buff people – not because the average person who goes to the gym is super buff, but because super buff people go to the gym more frequently.
Evaporative cooling: out of every student at my university who would attend its queer pride club at least sometimes (set Q), some are just on the edge of interest. One of them (Q1) attends a club social and observes a subset Q′⊂Q: the people who actually showed up. The average member of this subset are more enthusiastic about queer culture than the superset, dissuading Q1 from attending future meetings (they don’t fit in) and strengthening the average enthusiasm of members in Q′.
Sometimes I notice that people in communities formed around an attribute display a higher intensity of that attribute than one’d expect – here’s my hypothesis for why this might be.
Selection effects: if you pluck a random person from the gym, they will probably be more of a fitness enthusiast than the average person who regularly goes to the gym, because more enthusiastic exercisers work out more often, so you’re more likely to have picked them. So if you peer across the gym room, you’ll see a bunch of super buff people – not because the average person who goes to the gym is super buff, but because super buff people go to the gym more frequently.
Evaporative cooling: out of every student at my university who would attend its queer pride club at least sometimes (set Q), some are just on the edge of interest. One of them (Q1) attends a club social and observes a subset Q′⊂Q: the people who actually showed up. The average member of this subset are more enthusiastic about queer culture than the superset, dissuading Q1 from attending future meetings (they don’t fit in) and strengthening the average enthusiasm of members in Q′.
My explanation rests on two assumptions which don’t apply to every community.
People who display a higher intensity of some trait around which a community is formed attend meetings with that community more often.
More enthusiastic members dissuade more members who are on the edge than they attract.