This is tricky because not letting someone join your conversation is often seen as a sign that they’re unwelcome/you-don’t-like-them, and I wish this could change as an overall rationalist-culture-norm specifically so that it _wouldn’t_ send that signal. Instead it’s just understood that “having a high context conversation” is an activity you can’t really interrupt once it’s started.
I want to express a feeling I had reading this paragraph, though not necessarily because I think we have a disagreement about the concrete policy recommendation. (You’re right, this norm seems good, and I’ve been actively trying to follow it myself at recent events.)
My feeling, reading this paragraph, is that it’s making a naive mistake of assuming that the reason a certain behaviour signals a certain underlying fact about social reality is just a mistake and could just be changed.
Whereas in actuality, there’s a reason that this behaviour normally has this signal. There’s something different in this community than in many/most other communities, and I think for this post to change people’s feelings it would be better to name the true fact about other social situations that people are accurately modelling, and then make a simple argument about what’s different here.
Hm, I guess the true fact about other social situations is that most of the time when this stuff happens it’s because the person really doesn’t want to talk to you (“Social Intercourse”, David, Larry). Eg. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom, but it was nice talking to you”.
And what’s different here is that it actually is quite likely that a group at a rationalist party having a conversation would be in a high context state that is sensitive to adding newcomers. So when they tell you this, it’s actually quite likely to be true and quite unlikely to be an excuse. That does seem like a good thing to point out. Also I assume people at rationalist parties are generally pretty nice and unlikely to be unfriendly to someone.
I think the problem is that newcomer is a relative term. If I have a high-context conversation usually there are people where I think they would have the context to productively join the conversation because of their background and others who wouldn’t be able to productively join.
I want to express a feeling I had reading this paragraph, though not necessarily because I think we have a disagreement about the concrete policy recommendation. (You’re right, this norm seems good, and I’ve been actively trying to follow it myself at recent events.)
My feeling, reading this paragraph, is that it’s making a naive mistake of assuming that the reason a certain behaviour signals a certain underlying fact about social reality is just a mistake and could just be changed.
Whereas in actuality, there’s a reason that this behaviour normally has this signal. There’s something different in this community than in many/most other communities, and I think for this post to change people’s feelings it would be better to name the true fact about other social situations that people are accurately modelling, and then make a simple argument about what’s different here.
Hm, I guess the true fact about other social situations is that most of the time when this stuff happens it’s because the person really doesn’t want to talk to you (“Social Intercourse”, David, Larry). Eg. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom, but it was nice talking to you”.
And what’s different here is that it actually is quite likely that a group at a rationalist party having a conversation would be in a high context state that is sensitive to adding newcomers. So when they tell you this, it’s actually quite likely to be true and quite unlikely to be an excuse. That does seem like a good thing to point out. Also I assume people at rationalist parties are generally pretty nice and unlikely to be unfriendly to someone.
I think the problem is that newcomer is a relative term. If I have a high-context conversation usually there are people where I think they would have the context to productively join the conversation because of their background and others who wouldn’t be able to productively join.