First, assume that the “LessWrong.com gestalt” (hereafter “LessWrong” had a collective positive bias early on.
Then, it’s reasonable to assume LessWrong down-voted early pessimistic posts.
From there, it’s reasonable to assume that the initial dissenters would have largely dropped the topic due to negative reinforcement—even if they’re still pessimistic, they’ll have concluded that pessimistic posts will just hurt their social standing and not change many minds.
As new people join, the initial dissenters fail to rally to pessimistic posts, but the optimists still rally to optimistic posts.
The net effect is to perpetuate that initial optimistic bias.
Finally: Your local meetup doesn’t come with that optimistic bias pre-installed, so it can develop it’s own bias! (at least, as soon as the members realize there’s not that disincentive towards pessimistic posts.)
Yes—more generally, this is the difference between a community norm and the surveyed opinion of members of the community. Awareness of this can separate a community into core and non-core as the early tone-setters get defensive of what they see as the fundaments of the community, and this has the danger of evaporative cooling of group beliefs.
First, assume that the “LessWrong.com gestalt” (hereafter “LessWrong” had a collective positive bias early on.
Then, it’s reasonable to assume LessWrong down-voted early pessimistic posts.
From there, it’s reasonable to assume that the initial dissenters would have largely dropped the topic due to negative reinforcement—even if they’re still pessimistic, they’ll have concluded that pessimistic posts will just hurt their social standing and not change many minds.
As new people join, the initial dissenters fail to rally to pessimistic posts, but the optimists still rally to optimistic posts.
The net effect is to perpetuate that initial optimistic bias.
Finally: Your local meetup doesn’t come with that optimistic bias pre-installed, so it can develop it’s own bias! (at least, as soon as the members realize there’s not that disincentive towards pessimistic posts.)
Yes—more generally, this is the difference between a community norm and the surveyed opinion of members of the community. Awareness of this can separate a community into core and non-core as the early tone-setters get defensive of what they see as the fundaments of the community, and this has the danger of evaporative cooling of group beliefs.