Less Wrong is just a community that is on the whole, and despite it’s best efforts and intentions, toxic to rationality. The reasons for this are perhaps the belief that members of this community possess a special kind of ethically-significant knowledge or skill, a special ethically-significant mission, and that members of this community routinely express contempt for the beliefs of outsiders.
Partially off-topic: Please avoid using the word “community” when referring to online social groups. A real-world community is a group of people who deal with one another in order to share protection from bodily harm and cultivate a nurturing environment. Invoking this nurturing metaphor in reference to a virtual social space is itself quite risky, in terms of irrationality, cultishness and other failures of social interaction. We should avoid doing this, much for the same reason some of us would consider declaring Crocker’s Rules: fostering rationality and truth-seeking is more important than preserving egos or good feelings.
Partially off-topic: Please avoid using the word “web” when referring to a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the internet. A real-world “web” is a device built by a spider out of silk for the purpose of trapping insects. Invoking this predatory metaphor in reference to a virtual information space is itself quite risky, in terms of irrationality, cultishness and other failures of information collection.
You’re right! To prevent this abhorrent crime against rationality, I hereby rename the web to SIHDAVI (short for ‘system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the internet’).
A real-world community is a group of people who deal with one another in order to share protection from bodily harm and cultivate a nurturing environment.
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.
A real-world community is a group of people who deal with one another in order to share protection from bodily harm and cultivate a nurturing environment.
Bodily harm might not apply to online groups, but LW is definitely a community in the sense that it is nurturing people in the process of developing and refining ideas, many of which can’t be brought up in discussion with the users’ everyday circles of acquaintances and friends. The site has a shared vocabulary which makes it easier to discuss rationality-related concepts, and the fact that anyone can comment means that people spend quite a lot of time encouraging and giving feedback to other members. If this isn’t ‘nurturing’, then I don’t know what is.
LW is definitely a community in the sense that it is nurturing people in the process of developing and refining ideas …
So call it a community of practice. But again, a genuine CoP (in the cognitive anthropological sense) is not quite the same as a social club which just refers to itself as a “community” as an excuse for engaging in groupthink and petty politics. If you want to be understood by established researchers in this and related areas (such as epistemic community), it is very important to use correct terminology. Many of them would not advocate the term “community” without some clear qualifiers attached.
But again, a genuine CoP (in the cognitive anthropological sense) is not quite the same as a social club which just refers to itself as a “community” as an excuse for engaging in groupthink and petty politics.
Ah, I see you are familiar with the Connotation Game! For the sake of clarity, though, I’d recommend you phrase your entries like this:
OK. So the source of this argument is...you’re taking the “cognitive anthropological meaning” of community. I’ve never studied cognitive anthropology, so I guess I’m using the “folk” definition of community. Which is all fair and good–according to cognitive anthropologists, I’m wrong–except that (I strongly suspect) almost everyone else on this site is also using the folk definition, not the specialists’ one.
Partially off-topic: Please avoid using the word “community” when referring to online social groups. A real-world community is a group of people who deal with one another in order to share protection from bodily harm and cultivate a nurturing environment. Invoking this nurturing metaphor in reference to a virtual social space is itself quite risky, in terms of irrationality, cultishness and other failures of social interaction. We should avoid doing this, much for the same reason some of us would consider declaring Crocker’s Rules: fostering rationality and truth-seeking is more important than preserving egos or good feelings.
You’re right! To prevent this abhorrent crime against rationality, I hereby rename the web to SIHDAVI (short for ‘system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the internet’).
That’s not the generally accepted definition of community.
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.
Bodily harm might not apply to online groups, but LW is definitely a community in the sense that it is nurturing people in the process of developing and refining ideas, many of which can’t be brought up in discussion with the users’ everyday circles of acquaintances and friends. The site has a shared vocabulary which makes it easier to discuss rationality-related concepts, and the fact that anyone can comment means that people spend quite a lot of time encouraging and giving feedback to other members. If this isn’t ‘nurturing’, then I don’t know what is.
So call it a community of practice. But again, a genuine CoP (in the cognitive anthropological sense) is not quite the same as a social club which just refers to itself as a “community” as an excuse for engaging in groupthink and petty politics. If you want to be understood by established researchers in this and related areas (such as epistemic community), it is very important to use correct terminology. Many of them would not advocate the term “community” without some clear qualifiers attached.
Ah, I see you are familiar with the Connotation Game! For the sake of clarity, though, I’d recommend you phrase your entries like this:
We are a community.
You guys are a social club.
They are a clique.
OK. So the source of this argument is...you’re taking the “cognitive anthropological meaning” of community. I’ve never studied cognitive anthropology, so I guess I’m using the “folk” definition of community. Which is all fair and good–according to cognitive anthropologists, I’m wrong–except that (I strongly suspect) almost everyone else on this site is also using the folk definition, not the specialists’ one.
No. I think you are wrong. “Community” is sometimes the appropriate word.
That’s not saying much. Do you agree with my statement about the connotation of the term “community”?