There’s a social club in town. You’re inspired by their online presence, so you decide to sign up. The website looks polished. You notice the agenda on the sidebar is full of events as you fill in the form to sign up. You send the form, and hope for the best.
A few hours later, you receive an email. “Congratulations! You are eligible for the selection process.” You rejoice.
Then comes the selection day. There is a terrifying interview and you are tested for all kinds of things. Luckily, you make it through!
The next day, you receive a phone call. A warm voice greets you. “Congratulations! Your initiation period starts now. For the upcoming eight weeks, there will be many social activities for the new initiates. We expect you to be there. On top of that, we will find you a house, and invite you to choose a role in one of our committees. You are also now welcome in our community space, which is open 24⁄7. All of that will end with the initiation ceremony when you receive your bracelet and become a full member.”
Would you feel welcome in this club? Would you want to participate?
This is an exaggerated version of how student societies work in the Netherlands. I think there are a few elements in there that make it work.
For one, there is a clear explicit membership/nonmembership divide. This makes belonging less questionable, which reduces a lot of anxiety.
For another, there is a clear path for getting involved. Everyone has the same (sometimes grueling) initiation period through which they meet their first friends and get a handle. Then there are committees.
Third, roles being explicit makes it common knowledge who is doing what, which is enough of a positive feedback mechanism for doing small tasks.
Feels like there’s a lot of low hanging fruit to gather by looking at existing communities.
I think something like this would probably be good to exist if it were done right (with “done right” doing some nontrivial work in the sentence). One problem is that once you get to doing something this elaborate, people will probably have strong and different opinions about what “right” looks like.
(i.e. right now, there’s a sense in which it doesn’t matter that much if there’s a community schism, people can still just keep hanging out with whoever, but if groups are more formalized and require a lot of investment to keep running at these standards, a schism would be more damaging).
There’s also the fact that rationalists are selected for being averse to this sort of thing. See the amount of pushback Duncan is getting for a very small opt-in experiment. I imagine the thing you’re describing being less extreme than Dragon Army barracks, but also being much more comprehensive)
Here’s a thought experiment:
There’s a social club in town. You’re inspired by their online presence, so you decide to sign up. The website looks polished. You notice the agenda on the sidebar is full of events as you fill in the form to sign up. You send the form, and hope for the best. A few hours later, you receive an email. “Congratulations! You are eligible for the selection process.” You rejoice. Then comes the selection day. There is a terrifying interview and you are tested for all kinds of things. Luckily, you make it through! The next day, you receive a phone call. A warm voice greets you. “Congratulations! Your initiation period starts now. For the upcoming eight weeks, there will be many social activities for the new initiates. We expect you to be there. On top of that, we will find you a house, and invite you to choose a role in one of our committees. You are also now welcome in our community space, which is open 24⁄7. All of that will end with the initiation ceremony when you receive your bracelet and become a full member.”
Would you feel welcome in this club? Would you want to participate?
This is an exaggerated version of how student societies work in the Netherlands. I think there are a few elements in there that make it work.
For one, there is a clear explicit membership/nonmembership divide. This makes belonging less questionable, which reduces a lot of anxiety.
For another, there is a clear path for getting involved. Everyone has the same (sometimes grueling) initiation period through which they meet their first friends and get a handle. Then there are committees.
Third, roles being explicit makes it common knowledge who is doing what, which is enough of a positive feedback mechanism for doing small tasks.
Feels like there’s a lot of low hanging fruit to gather by looking at existing communities.
I think something like this would probably be good to exist if it were done right (with “done right” doing some nontrivial work in the sentence). One problem is that once you get to doing something this elaborate, people will probably have strong and different opinions about what “right” looks like.
(i.e. right now, there’s a sense in which it doesn’t matter that much if there’s a community schism, people can still just keep hanging out with whoever, but if groups are more formalized and require a lot of investment to keep running at these standards, a schism would be more damaging).
There’s also the fact that rationalists are selected for being averse to this sort of thing. See the amount of pushback Duncan is getting for a very small opt-in experiment. I imagine the thing you’re describing being less extreme than Dragon Army barracks, but also being much more comprehensive)