I agree with these, and I wonder how we can counteract these effects. For example I’ve often used “LWer” as shorthand for “LW participant”. Would it be better to write out the latter in full? Should we more explicitly invite newcomers to think of LW in instrumental/consequentialist terms, and not in terms of identity and affiliation? For example, we could explain that “joining the LW community” ought to be interpreted as “making use of LW facilities and contributing to LW discussions and projects” rather than “adopting ‘LW member’ as part of one’s social identity and endorsing some identifying set of ideas”, and maybe link to some articles like Paul Graham’s Keep Your Identity Small.
Should we more explicitly invite newcomers to think of LW in instrumental/consequentialist terms, and not in
terms of identity and affiliation?
I think so. The other thing about “snide digs” the grandparent is talking about is they are not just bad image, they are also wrong (as in incorrect). I think the LW “hit rate” on specific enough technical matters is not all that good, to be honest.
One of the times the issue of overidentifying with LW came up here, about a year ago, I mentioned that my self-description is “LW regular [forum participant]”. It means that I post regularly, but does not mean that I derive any sense of identity from it. “LWer” certainly sounds more like “this is my community”, so I stay away from using it except toward people who explicitly self-identify as such. I also tend to discount quite a bit of what someone here posts, once I notice them using the pronoun “we” when describing the community, unless I know for sure that they are not caught up in the sense of belonging to a group of cool “rationalists”.
I think the “LWer” appellation is just plain accurate (but then I’ve used the term myself). Any blog with a regular group of posters & commenters constitutes a community, so LW is a community. Posting here regularly makes us members of this community by default, and being coy about that fact would make me feel odd, given that we’ve strewn evidence of it all over the site. But I suspect I’m coming at this issue from a bit of an odd angle.
I agree with these, and I wonder how we can counteract these effects. For example I’ve often used “LWer” as shorthand for “LW participant”. Would it be better to write out the latter in full? Should we more explicitly invite newcomers to think of LW in instrumental/consequentialist terms, and not in terms of identity and affiliation? For example, we could explain that “joining the LW community” ought to be interpreted as “making use of LW facilities and contributing to LW discussions and projects” rather than “adopting ‘LW member’ as part of one’s social identity and endorsing some identifying set of ideas”, and maybe link to some articles like Paul Graham’s Keep Your Identity Small.
“Here at LW, we like to keep our identity small.”
Nice one.
I think so. The other thing about “snide digs” the grandparent is talking about is they are not just bad image, they are also wrong (as in incorrect). I think the LW “hit rate” on specific enough technical matters is not all that good, to be honest.
One of the times the issue of overidentifying with LW came up here, about a year ago, I mentioned that my self-description is “LW regular [forum participant]”. It means that I post regularly, but does not mean that I derive any sense of identity from it. “LWer” certainly sounds more like “this is my community”, so I stay away from using it except toward people who explicitly self-identify as such. I also tend to discount quite a bit of what someone here posts, once I notice them using the pronoun “we” when describing the community, unless I know for sure that they are not caught up in the sense of belonging to a group of cool “rationalists”.
I think the “LWer” appellation is just plain accurate (but then I’ve used the term myself). Any blog with a regular group of posters & commenters constitutes a community, so LW is a community. Posting here regularly makes us members of this community by default, and being coy about that fact would make me feel odd, given that we’ve strewn evidence of it all over the site. But I suspect I’m coming at this issue from a bit of an odd angle.