What are you using the word “rationalist” to mean? If you just mean “members of any subculture bearing some line of memetic descent from early Less Wrong” (which I don’t think deserves the pretentious term rationalist, but putting that aside), why is “communication platform” a useful way to chop up that social grouping? A lot of the same people use Less Wrong and Facebook and Twitter and Discord and Google Docs, and a lot of the people who use the same platform wouldn’t be in the same cluster if you were to analyze the graph of what actual conversations people are using these platforms to have.
It’s a natural way to cut it up from one’s own experience. Each platform has different affordances and brings out different aspects of people, and I get pretty different experiences of them on the different platforms mentioned.
What are you using the word “rationalist” to mean? If you just mean “members of any subculture bearing some line of memetic descent from early Less Wrong” (which I don’t think deserves the pretentious term rationalist, but putting that aside), why is “communication platform” a useful way to chop up that social grouping? A lot of the same people use Less Wrong and Facebook and Twitter and Discord and Google Docs, and a lot of the people who use the same platform wouldn’t be in the same cluster if you were to analyze the graph of what actual conversations people are using these platforms to have.
It’s a natural way to cut it up from one’s own experience. Each platform has different affordances and brings out different aspects of people, and I get pretty different experiences of them on the different platforms mentioned.