Robin says that we have less cultural diversity than in the past. I am not sure about that. In the past, we had geographically separated cultures, but within each culture, there wasn’t enough space for many subcultures. Today, the cultures are closer, but the subcultures can be larger. Hundred years ago, there would be no such thing as the rationalist community. (Even using the example from Robin’s article: it’s not like Amish are living on some distant island.)
I don’t understand the argument why colonizing the stars would not fix the problem (of cultural drift leading to low fertility). My worry would be the opposite—that the future will belong to those who replicate the fastest (and sacrifice everything else for that goal).
Today, the cultures are closer, but the subcultures can be larger. Hundred years ago, there would be no such thing as the rationalist community.
That seems like a stretch, whether you put the stress on the ‘community’ or the ‘rationalist’ part. Subcultures can be larger, of course, if only because the global population is like 5x larger, but niche subcultures like ‘the rationalist community’ could certainly have existed then. Nothing much has changed there.
A hundred years ago was 1925; in 1925 there were countless communes, cults, Chinatowns/ghettos (or perhaps a better example would be ‘Germantowns’), ‘scenes’, and other kinds of subcultures and notable small groups. Bay Area LW/rationalists have been analogized to, for example, the (much smaller) Bloomsbury Group, which was still active in 1925; and from whom, incidentally, we can directly trace some intellectual influence through economics, decision theory, libertarianism, and analytic philosophy, even if one rejects any connection with poly etc. We’ve been analogized to the Vienna Circle as well (and who we trace much more back to), which is in full swing in 1925. Or how about the Fabians before that? Or Technocracy after that? (And in an amusing coincidence, Paul Kurtz turns out to have been born in 1925.) Or things like Esperanto—even now, a century past its heyday, the number of native Esperanto speakers is shockingly comparable to active LW2 users… Then there’s fascinating subcultures like the amateur press that nurtured H. P. Lovecraft, who, as of 1925, has grown out of them and is about to start writing the speculative fiction stories that will make him famous.
(And as far as the Amish go, it’s worth recalling that they came to the distant large island of America to achieve distance from persecution in Europe—where the Amish no longer exist—and to minimize attrition & interference by ‘the English’, continue to live in as isolated communities as possible while still consistent with their needs for farmland etc.)
Robin says that we have less cultural diversity than in the past. I am not sure about that. In the past, we had geographically separated cultures, but within each culture, there wasn’t enough space for many subcultures. Today, the cultures are closer, but the subcultures can be larger. Hundred years ago, there would be no such thing as the rationalist community. (Even using the example from Robin’s article: it’s not like Amish are living on some distant island.)
I don’t understand the argument why colonizing the stars would not fix the problem (of cultural drift leading to low fertility). My worry would be the opposite—that the future will belong to those who replicate the fastest (and sacrifice everything else for that goal).
That seems like a stretch, whether you put the stress on the ‘community’ or the ‘rationalist’ part. Subcultures can be larger, of course, if only because the global population is like 5x larger, but niche subcultures like ‘the rationalist community’ could certainly have existed then. Nothing much has changed there.
A hundred years ago was 1925; in 1925 there were countless communes, cults, Chinatowns/ghettos (or perhaps a better example would be ‘Germantowns’), ‘scenes’, and other kinds of subcultures and notable small groups. Bay Area LW/rationalists have been analogized to, for example, the (much smaller) Bloomsbury Group, which was still active in 1925; and from whom, incidentally, we can directly trace some intellectual influence through economics, decision theory, libertarianism, and analytic philosophy, even if one rejects any connection with poly etc. We’ve been analogized to the Vienna Circle as well (and who we trace much more back to), which is in full swing in 1925. Or how about the Fabians before that? Or Technocracy after that? (And in an amusing coincidence, Paul Kurtz turns out to have been born in 1925.) Or things like Esperanto—even now, a century past its heyday, the number of native Esperanto speakers is shockingly comparable to active LW2 users… Then there’s fascinating subcultures like the amateur press that nurtured H. P. Lovecraft, who, as of 1925, has grown out of them and is about to start writing the speculative fiction stories that will make him famous.
(And as far as the Amish go, it’s worth recalling that they came to the distant large island of America to achieve distance from persecution in Europe—where the Amish no longer exist—and to minimize attrition & interference by ‘the English’, continue to live in as isolated communities as possible while still consistent with their needs for farmland etc.)