You know, you probably do have a community already. Your city, or neighborhood, or college campus. Nothing prevents you from valuing your local environment for what it is and protecting it from harm, while also engaging with an intelligent social group through computer-mediated communication.
As some folks say, it is best to think globally and act locally.
“You know, you probably do have a community already.”
Nobody is prevented from having more than one community, and nowadays most people do. That’s because communication isn’t strictly local anymore.
But even in older times there was usage of terms like “the academic community” or “the gay community” or the “feminist community” to describe groups of people that were not strictly bound together by locale, but nonetheless communicated/discussed and shared info and ideas with each other in a way much more dense than mere global dissemination across humanity.
But even in older times there was usage of terms like “the academic community” or “the gay community” or the “feminist community” …
Academics used to meet in person frequently in order to coordinate their work, and they still do so to an extent, so they naturally referred to academia as a community in the local sense. The usage of the term “community” by feminist and LGBT activists was politically motivated; it was intended to underscore the fact that women or LGBT people did really share significant bodily risks as a result of their relatively low status, and that they could only protect themselves from such harm by engaging in political activism and opposing their purported “communities”. Clearly, this does not apply here; by and large, LW readers are not risking bodily harm in their local environment as a result of being rationalists.
I disagree. I love having a community, and feeling like I’m part of an intelligent but caring environment on LessWrong.
However, I’d love to see you expand your thoughts about that and turn it into a discussion post.
You know, you probably do have a community already. Your city, or neighborhood, or college campus. Nothing prevents you from valuing your local environment for what it is and protecting it from harm, while also engaging with an intelligent social group through computer-mediated communication.
As some folks say, it is best to think globally and act locally.
“You know, you probably do have a community already.”
Nobody is prevented from having more than one community, and nowadays most people do. That’s because communication isn’t strictly local anymore.
But even in older times there was usage of terms like “the academic community” or “the gay community” or the “feminist community” to describe groups of people that were not strictly bound together by locale, but nonetheless communicated/discussed and shared info and ideas with each other in a way much more dense than mere global dissemination across humanity.
Academics used to meet in person frequently in order to coordinate their work, and they still do so to an extent, so they naturally referred to academia as a community in the local sense. The usage of the term “community” by feminist and LGBT activists was politically motivated; it was intended to underscore the fact that women or LGBT people did really share significant bodily risks as a result of their relatively low status, and that they could only protect themselves from such harm by engaging in political activism and opposing their purported “communities”. Clearly, this does not apply here; by and large, LW readers are not risking bodily harm in their local environment as a result of being rationalists.