The one thing I think this post is most missing, if it’s primarily aimed at rationalists, is how introverted rationalists can go about making new friends. I’ve met a lot of people drawn to the rationality community because they don’t know how to otherwise join of group of people to befriend, who they also have enough in common with that they would want to befriend them. Not saying that this isn’t a good article (I strongly upvoted it, based alone on how important I think this signal/message is), nor that I know the best way to write about “how to make more friends (outside the rationality community)”. I’m just saying if you have it in you, I think that would also be a post worth writing.
“Making new friends” or “Joining a New Group of Friends” or “Joining a New Community” might seem so obvious that it doesn’t merit writing up how rationalists can do that. Yet, again, I’ve met rationalists who before they joined the rationality community that thought themselves so unable to make new friends in adulthood, they consider themselves lucky to even have fallen ass-backwards into the rationality community.
I note that one of Davis’ categories was friends from competitive gaming—I’d guess there are a lot of nerdy, introverted types there. Some other activities that come to my mind as having a lot of people from that demographic: various other kinds of games (video/computer games, go, chess, pen-and-paper roleplaying games), juggling, historical reenactment, Wikipedia editing, fiber arts (spinning, dyeing, knitting, etc).
I suspect there are challenges for rationalists in joining new communities beyond introversion. I’ve found it jarring to be getting along with some new folk and then people start saying ridiculous things, but worse, having no real interest in determining whether the things they say are actually true. Or even when they try, being terrible at discussion. I don’t need to nitpick everything or correct every “wrong” thing I hear, but it is hard to feel like beliefs aren’t real to people—they’re just things you say. A performance.
There are people outside the rationality community who are fine at the above, but being used to rationalists does introduce some novel challenges. It’d be nice if we ever accumulated communal knowledge on how to bridge such cultural gaps.
The first thing I would think to look at to solve this problem is to look at cultural gaps between rationality and adjacent communities, especially based on how they interact in person, like effective altruism, startup culture, transhumanism, etc.
The one thing I think this post is most missing, if it’s primarily aimed at rationalists, is how introverted rationalists can go about making new friends. I’ve met a lot of people drawn to the rationality community because they don’t know how to otherwise join of group of people to befriend, who they also have enough in common with that they would want to befriend them. Not saying that this isn’t a good article (I strongly upvoted it, based alone on how important I think this signal/message is), nor that I know the best way to write about “how to make more friends (outside the rationality community)”. I’m just saying if you have it in you, I think that would also be a post worth writing.
“Making new friends” or “Joining a New Group of Friends” or “Joining a New Community” might seem so obvious that it doesn’t merit writing up how rationalists can do that. Yet, again, I’ve met rationalists who before they joined the rationality community that thought themselves so unable to make new friends in adulthood, they consider themselves lucky to even have fallen ass-backwards into the rationality community.
I note that one of Davis’ categories was friends from competitive gaming—I’d guess there are a lot of nerdy, introverted types there. Some other activities that come to my mind as having a lot of people from that demographic: various other kinds of games (video/computer games, go, chess, pen-and-paper roleplaying games), juggling, historical reenactment, Wikipedia editing, fiber arts (spinning, dyeing, knitting, etc).
I suspect there are challenges for rationalists in joining new communities beyond introversion. I’ve found it jarring to be getting along with some new folk and then people start saying ridiculous things, but worse, having no real interest in determining whether the things they say are actually true. Or even when they try, being terrible at discussion. I don’t need to nitpick everything or correct every “wrong” thing I hear, but it is hard to feel like beliefs aren’t real to people—they’re just things you say. A performance.
There are people outside the rationality community who are fine at the above, but being used to rationalists does introduce some novel challenges. It’d be nice if we ever accumulated communal knowledge on how to bridge such cultural gaps.
The first thing I would think to look at to solve this problem is to look at cultural gaps between rationality and adjacent communities, especially based on how they interact in person, like effective altruism, startup culture, transhumanism, etc.
I think part of the point of the OP was to get outside that still relatively narrow set of subcultures.