I think it is easier to feel like a part of a group, if you feel that other people in the group are similar to you. That can happen for various reasons, such as:
the people actually are similar to you;
typical mind fallacy makes you believe in similarity by default, without evidence;
the environment makes similarities salient, and differences invisible;
you notice both the similarities and the differences, but decide that the similarities are important and the differences are unimportant.
So. The first option doesn’t work for you if you really are atypical in some sense; this applies to all LW readers, I suppose. The second option, well, we are trying to overcome our biases, aren’t we? That leaves options three and four—the latter is about you as an individual, and the former is about the (sub)culture you want to fit in.
If we take the rationalist community, then “being aspiring rationalists” is something we have in common, though there can be other things that divide us. Some people care deeply about math and AI, others want life hacks, yet others want to do effective altruism; it could be more easy to feel like a part of a subgroup. The culture of nitpicking definitely puts the emphasis on differences; the question is how to mitigate this without giving up our shared value of truth-seeking.
(Of course there are other possible groups one could want to join, with other advantages and disadvantages.)
Oh, by the way, option four is not symmetric! You can think that what you have in common with person X is important, and the differences are unimportant… but the person X may have an opposite opinion.
More complicated, option four is not transitive. Suppose there are two traits you have in common with person X; you think the first one is important, they think the second one is important. Anyway, you both feel you could be members of the same group, and that’s nice, right? Except, you disagree about other candidates for your group...
I suppose the lesson here is that you should make your values explicit. Which is easier said than done, because of illusion of transparency, insufficient introspection, or even not having words for some concepts. For many years I had a LessWrong-shaped hole in my heart, but my attempts to explain it… “intelligent people”, “thinking about important things”, “actually doing stuff”, “trying to improve the world”… made others point me towards Mensa, philosophy, entrepreneurs, and non-profits respectively. But Mensa only did puzzles, philosophy was about status signaling, entrepreneurs often had horrible epistemology outside of their domain of expertise, and most people in non-profits were hopelessly mindkilled. For lack of better options I hanged out with them, but still felt alone. Heck, even today I probably couldn’t explain the essence of Less Wrong. (Also: the ideology is not the movement, but to start a movement, you need to clearly point towards a new point in thingspace, otherwise the existing attractors will swallow you before take your first step.) I still don’t know how to do this properly.
Plus there is the obvious trade-off between the quality and the size of the bubble. The more you expect, the fewer people are able to fulfill those expectations. Maybe the solution is a system of overlapping bubbles of various size and quality.
I think it is easier to feel like a part of a group, if you feel that other people in the group are similar to you. That can happen for various reasons, such as:
the people actually are similar to you;
typical mind fallacy makes you believe in similarity by default, without evidence;
the environment makes similarities salient, and differences invisible;
you notice both the similarities and the differences, but decide that the similarities are important and the differences are unimportant.
So. The first option doesn’t work for you if you really are atypical in some sense; this applies to all LW readers, I suppose. The second option, well, we are trying to overcome our biases, aren’t we? That leaves options three and four—the latter is about you as an individual, and the former is about the (sub)culture you want to fit in.
If we take the rationalist community, then “being aspiring rationalists” is something we have in common, though there can be other things that divide us. Some people care deeply about math and AI, others want life hacks, yet others want to do effective altruism; it could be more easy to feel like a part of a subgroup. The culture of nitpicking definitely puts the emphasis on differences; the question is how to mitigate this without giving up our shared value of truth-seeking.
(Of course there are other possible groups one could want to join, with other advantages and disadvantages.)
Oh, by the way, option four is not symmetric! You can think that what you have in common with person X is important, and the differences are unimportant… but the person X may have an opposite opinion.
More complicated, option four is not transitive. Suppose there are two traits you have in common with person X; you think the first one is important, they think the second one is important. Anyway, you both feel you could be members of the same group, and that’s nice, right? Except, you disagree about other candidates for your group...
I suppose the lesson here is that you should make your values explicit. Which is easier said than done, because of illusion of transparency, insufficient introspection, or even not having words for some concepts. For many years I had a LessWrong-shaped hole in my heart, but my attempts to explain it… “intelligent people”, “thinking about important things”, “actually doing stuff”, “trying to improve the world”… made others point me towards Mensa, philosophy, entrepreneurs, and non-profits respectively. But Mensa only did puzzles, philosophy was about status signaling, entrepreneurs often had horrible epistemology outside of their domain of expertise, and most people in non-profits were hopelessly mindkilled. For lack of better options I hanged out with them, but still felt alone. Heck, even today I probably couldn’t explain the essence of Less Wrong. (Also: the ideology is not the movement, but to start a movement, you need to clearly point towards a new point in thingspace, otherwise the existing attractors will swallow you before take your first step.) I still don’t know how to do this properly.
Plus there is the obvious trade-off between the quality and the size of the bubble. The more you expect, the fewer people are able to fulfill those expectations. Maybe the solution is a system of overlapping bubbles of various size and quality.